This is a translation of two tablets: BE 31,28, the original story of The Princess
Wife (PW1) and MS 3228, the sequel (PW2). Together they form a single cohesive
narrative (PW3).
The Princess Wife, the whole story (PW3)
by: Jerald Jack Starr
[x-] = Missing or damaged text {… } =
explanatory comments
Prince Mulu is the Great Fatted Donkey. He is the husband of the
Princess Wife.
The story opens in the royal palace. Mulu and Zuzu have recently returned
from a campaign of plundering
the countryside. The scene is set in the banquet hall. Mulu has just sat
down to enjoy his victory feast.
A servant girl waits in attendance.
[x,x]... with sweet words on her lips
the servant without equal bows down before Mulu, the powerful [x,
x].
She says, “Earth and the heavens feel worried when the strong man
is not near.”
Zuzu, with much plundering, has become a wealthy man.
He says to Mulu, “Behold the lord! You are a contented man
of riches.
“You are a trusted man of authority, a man generous with his
rations and his verdicts.”
Mulu eats his food like a pig. He divides his captured fodder, and
with his hands
he crams it into his mouth and chokes it down.
“My flanks grow fat!" he brays, while eating all the food his
hands can grab.
Night comes. His rivals wander in by themselves. One of the men is
stealing
a bowl of malted cakes.
{Someone in the darkness calls out to Mulu.}
“The people’s rations will make you bray with great burning
indigestion!
“Permanently!”
Nose to his fat nose, the “man not his servant” {rebel, enemy}
throttles Mulu.
Mulu opens his mouth and swears two oaths to his adversary.
He gasps, “All this malt and fodder ... to abandon! This
great eating to diminish!"
In the people’s judgment he is not lordly. The god Enlil does not
support him.
His wife decides to split his grain between her female servants
and his slave women.
He gets one single twig of his henbur
grain.
He cries out, “Why? For what
reason?" His stomach knows a great hunger.
Filled with wine, he clutches his single twig of grain while his
heaps of plunder
are spread out before the happy slave women.
Mulu goes to work acting like a defeated man. He has been brought
low.
He walks in the manure of the countryside. He has become a pauper.
While the women live in abundance, Mulu is a man without power, without women,
and without virtue.
Like a storm, Mulu flies to the wife of Bantu, the Supreme Lord.
She says, “This will open her pure heart. Behold these jewelry
beads of stone.
“These you can barter for baskets of food.”
{Mulu returns to his former wife. He shows her the beads and he
tells her...}
“Behold the great gifts I made for you! I fashioned them to be so splendid
and magnificent.
"They are not from the marketplace.”
Princess Wife
The wife does not give her princess heart to the hero.
{Mulu sees that his plan isn’t working so he changes his tack.}
{He acts pitiful, trying to gain sympathy from the princess wife.}
“I am not a hero. I am not a great man… and I have no heaps of
grain.”
His wife already knows the plan of the man who is not a hero.
She says, “You’re planning to get back your barley and your
princely robes,
“but my trusted servant girl has told me all about your lack of
character.
“The price of one sila of grain {for each bead} also reveals
that my father
“gave you these stones.
“I will purchase them for a half basket of [x x…]”
"So you don't know beads…
“And you don’t know women!"
−
{Then, quite suddenly…}
The “man not his servant” {the enemy} strangles Mulu.
{Mulu was throttled once before. This time he is murdered.}
The wife says to the assailant, “But you are a very strong
man!”
She decides he would make a suitable lord and husband.
{The wife continues…}
“All women are prostitutes for men who rob and plunder.
“So I decree that the baskets of food will go to the person
“who can strike and kill with his hands.”
For his elder brother’s possessions, Zuzu brays like a happy replacement
donkey.
The princess says, “I shall give you a royal house, and you will be
"a gentleman with an ašag field, who gives
orders but does not work.
“Zuzu, you are destined to
be a powerful man! You will be my princely companion,
“and the Lord of the Cake Rations. And I will be your Princess of the Fodder,
“forever and ever and ever again!”
Zuzu was a virile, slender young man, but with all his grain, he quickly
became
a very very fat man.
{Zuzu has recently returned from another campaign of plundering
the countryside.}
He heaps up his captured grain, his newly captured henbur grain.
Zuzu’s possessions, his authority, and his stolen heaps of grain, will
soon
come to an end.
The princess has decided to replace Zuzu, who is not a man of the
people.
His land and his barley are turned over to his slave women.
Zuzu doesn’t get the grain that he plundered from the countryside.
The royal woman has decided against his destiny.
The princess declares, “Zuzu is not a man of The Land! {of Sumer}.
“For the devastation done by his hands, Zuzu will be banished!”
{Zuzu is banished from the royal court.}
After the sale of his possessions, Zuzu, who was not a man of
the people,
is left with nothing.
The verdict of the princess is that “the man with no land” must
work with his hands.
Zuzu enters into debt slavery.
He becomes the new member in her father's team
of workers.
He measures out the fields, he sows the grain and threshes it,
for wages that go to his wife.
[x x x]
[Unknown number of lines missing].
There is a lot happening in this story, much more than meets the eye. To fully understand what
is really going on,
you need to read the Annotations.
