[Infrastructure] After being mistaken for a god

"what--"

A scream broke the tranquility of the island in the early morning.

The waterfowl that originally lived on the shore were all startled, leaving only a few feathers in place.

"what--"

The screams did not stop, waking up everyone in the courtyard, and they ran out of the room where they were resting.

I saw Enji running around in the courtyard grabbing his white beard, saying loudly, "Drinking beer is a mistake, it's a big mistake for me, I should have been in..."

After turning around twice, he seemed to be able to discern the direction, and rushed straight towards the wall separating the "human world" and the "divine world" in the center of the island.

Yi Nan had already woken up, and at this time she called her companions to follow Enki.

Sure enough, the door on the wall that had been tightly shut was now wide open.

Yi Nan didn't stop on his feet, and rushed over directly.Gu Da and the other two teenagers followed without thinking too much.

Only Dumuzi paused when he stepped through the door, looked left and right, and stretched out his feet to step through the door——

Inside and outside the door, there is no difference, they all look the same.

Dumuzi took a deep breath and quickly followed.

Yi Nan saw a dock at the other end of the island——

The dock, too, was a long ramp with logs set on it.A huge log had already been dragged ashore through these logs in advance.

Ake behind Yinan let out a "huh", pointed to a device next to the dock, and said, "That's not, that's not..."

It was a winch and looked new.The surface bark of the wood used to make the winch was not completely removed.

Yinan laughed suddenly: "It seems that the people of Eridu are also very good at learning and using it."

Moreover, the Eridu people moved very quickly. Not long after Ake pointed out to them, tools like winches had already appeared on Enki's small island.

Ake also understood at this time that the device in front of him should be taught by him.This thin and quiet young man immediately straightened up, looking very proud.

At this moment, Yinan has already leaned over to look at this large log: he saw several lines drawn with chalk on the log, indicating that the bow and stern of the ship should be cut into a streamlined shape, and the middle of the log was hollowed out—this log is about to be made. into a canoe.

Since coming to Eridu, Inan has never seen a "boat" as a means of transportation.

In Eridu, where the waterways are like cobwebs, people usually use stable wooden rafts to cross the river, and light sheepskin rafts for sailing in distant waterways.

But here, on the small island of the "temple" that belonged to Enki, a "ship" in the true sense of the word appeared.

Human water transportation, from rafts to boats, is actually a considerable leap.The seemingly ordinary side of the ship actually provides a larger volume for the ship and provides more protection for the people on board.

With real "ships," the inhabitants of Eridu were able to sail to far places they could not reach before, or to withstand the unforgiving winds and waves of the sea.

At this time, the two teenagers, Hamti and Ake, rushed up and stretched out their arms, trying to embrace the log.After hugging them, they shook their heads together, indicating that this log is not as thick and tall as the giant pillars in front of the Temple of Inanna.

Yinan really wanted to remind them: Everyone, don't carry any pot without opening it. Aren't the huge pillars of the temple "cut off" from the hands of the Eridu people?

It was here that the beams of the Eriduans and the Uruk people were connected earlier—those huge logs, which were of greater use to the Eriduans, were taken by the Uruk people as a wooden fence in front of the Temple of Inanna. decorations.

If those giant pillars could be successfully transported to Eridu, they should also be transformed into "giant" canoes here in Enki, right?

From this point of view, Enjiken's "reconciliation" with them last night was actually quite generous.

Yi Nan laughed: She had planned a long time ago to reach an understanding with this downstream "neighbor" and maintain a long-term friendly and cooperative relationship in the future.Now it seems that it should be easier for her to achieve her goal.

So Yinan turned his head and looked for Enki on the island.

She took advantage of Enki's "drunkness" last night and asked about Enki's experience——

The "Enki" who appeared in front of the tour group is very close to the "Witch" in Uruk.He took over the role and power from the previous generation of "Enki", leading and protecting the residents of Eridu.

The "Enki" here will also point out the calendar for the local residents-but the calendar needed in Eridu is different from that in Uruk.The city by the water is most closely related to people's life is the tide.Therefore, Eridu's calendar pays attention to the influence of celestial bodies' movements on the tides. Whenever there are astronomical high tides, "Enki" can always give early warning.

There is another significant difference between the "temple" of Eridu and the temple of Uruk.

Unlike the witches and high priests of Uruk who only cared about making money and were self-confident, "Enki" of Eridu was always trying to invent and create - as long as he saw that a dock was built in the "temple" he was in, you would know this. The "Lord God" of Eridu has indeed been working hard on behalf of his blessed inhabitants.

Reminiscent of the story she heard about Beibi last night, Yinan believed that the "Enki" of Eridu was indeed more conscientious than the "Witch" of Uruk.

Yi Nan wrinkled his nose, thinking: Uruk can't be content to be left behind.

Soon, she found Enki's figure.The old man rushed into a house made of clay bricks just now, and now he is sitting cross-legged on the ground, fiddling with a large pile of wooden sticks and blocks in front of him.

This room is also very strange.The three sides of the house are walls, and one side is opened, and the opened side leads directly to the water surface of the Euphrates estuary, and a water source is drawn in from the outside, forming a small pool inside the house.

This small pool, besides being able to provide evidence for the level of the tide, also appears to be Enki's testing ground.

Yi Nan cautiously approached and said hello.

Enki seemed to be completely immersed in his own world, and he didn't even notice that Yi Nan entered the house.

After seeing the objects stacked in front of Enki, Yi Nan's eyes lit up: If there were ship models in more than 5000 BC, what she sees now is——

A wooden stick as thick as an arm was whittled into the shape of a canoe. In the hollowed out part of the canoe, a few small pieces of wood were inserted, like beams or partitions.But Inan knew that these were the seats for rowers and passengers.

Given the size of the logs currently procured at Eridu, these canoes could accommodate only a single row of oarsmen and passengers.

But Enki obviously hoped that these ships could carry more people and goods.Enki had various "ship models" in front of him, and his imagination was wide open: some canoes were tied together side by side to form a single boat; ...

Now Enki is holding a "model boat" of a canoe, and the two sides of the hull are built up several layers with thin wood chips - Enki obviously hopes that this way can increase the volume of the canoe and increase the weight of the boat. draft.

But the veneers look fragile and not waterproof.After the height of the hull, the center of gravity of the ship will also increase accordingly. When driving in the water, it is easy to tip and capsize.

Enki himself felt unreliable when he looked at it, so he held it in his hand and looked at it again and again, heaving a long sigh.

At this moment, Inan sat cross-legged beside Enki, and said in a low voice, "I'm sorry, if those logs hadn't been seized by Uruk, Eridu should have several big ships by now."

Unexpectedly, Enki shook his head and said, "I can't blame you all."

"Even if they get those logs, the boat that the Eridu people can make is only a circle bigger than the one outside now, and can accommodate a few more people."

But the vision of the Eridians is clearly more than that.

"That is to say, as long as the tree can grow, the boat can only be built so big, and the size of the boat can never exceed the size of the tree—"

When Enki spoke, he didn't look at Yinan at all, but at the model in his hand, completely immersed in his imagination.

If human beings always only think about building canoes, then the size of ships is indeed restricted by the size of trees; human beings will never be able to build large ships for cross-sea voyages.

"I don't believe this, I want to build a bigger and more stable boat." Enki snorted.

"Besides... Even in the upper reaches of the Euphrates River, it is difficult to find thicker trees. Could it be that all these towering giant trees that have grown for many, many years have been harvested just to make Eridu build ships?"

It seems that Enki's "early environmentalism" thinking is driving Enki to abandon the canoe idea.

But apart from canoes, what materials and methods can humans use to build ships larger than canoes?

Inan remained silent, continuing to watch Enki use thin wood to raise the side of the canoe.

"Or not--"

Enki tossed and tossed for a long time, but finally chose to give up, threw all the materials in his hand in front of him, and tugged at his beard in distress.

It seems that Enki has not come to see Yi Nan and the others for a long time, and he should be thinking hard about this matter.

"You used isinglass?" Yi Nan reached out, picked up the model ship that Enki had left behind, and sniffed it in front of him.

Isinoid glue is a biological glue made from the swim bladder of marine fish and freshwater fish. Its adhesion to wood is almost the best among all biological glues.But only a place like Eridu can produce enough isinglass for boat building.

However, only relying on isinglass can bond wood, but it cannot achieve the purpose of waterproofing.If the wood bonded in this way is thrown into the water, it will still soak and fall apart over time.

"Yes." Enki couldn't help raising his head when he heard that Yinan also recognized this glue, a little surprised.

"Then let's assume that you have found a material that can make the hull watertight and easily float on the water. In this case, how do you want to make your boat?"

Inan throws out another way of thinking about the problem.Seeing that Enki was also a smart person, he immediately followed Yi Nan's train of thought.

He immediately said: "If there is such a material, why should I build a canoe?"

"I don't need such a big log anymore." Enki threw away the thick wooden sticks in his hand, and found a thin and straight one, and put it in front of him.

Yi Nan's eyes brightened: It seems that the keel of the ship is about to appear.

Indeed, Enki took a lot of thin wood chips at random, found a small stone knife, trimmed these thin wood chips, and prepared to stick them on both sides of the keel.

Yi Nan knew that these pieces of wood covering the outside of the ship were called "masks". She put her hands on the ground and poked her head to see Enki's operation.

I saw that Enji was about to glue the "masks" together one by one, but found something wrong, these masks had no support and could not be fixed.

So Enki picked up his "canoe" model again and compared it; then he reached out for the rest of the wood, cut into several semi-circular beams with a stone knife, and dug out the beams embedded in the keel. Install these beams one by one on the keel—in this way, the overall structure of a ship has roughly appeared.

In this way, Enki easily fixed the mask on the beam and keel.At the bow and stern of the boat, he found hemp rope made of flax, and tied the two ends together to fix the two ends of the mask.

Yinan: ...is that okay?

But Enki actually did it.

And looking at the small ship model in front of me, it is really similar to the "ship" of later generations.

Enki put the little "boat" into the small pond in front of him.The boat really floated on the water, floating gently.

"it is good--"

There was applause behind him.When Yinan turned her head, she found that it was Dumuzi and others who had gathered in this room.In addition to the group of people from Uruk, there was also the uncle who used the sheepskin raft to pick them up.

It seems that Enki's "shipbuilding" experiment has attracted everyone's attention.

But it didn't take long for the hull of this "ship" to be soaked by sea water, and water slowly invaded from the extremely weak bow and stern, pouring into the hull.Soon, the hull of the model ship was filled with half of the water, and it floated half dead on the water.

Unexpectedly, Enki cried "wow" at this time.

The cry was exactly the same as when he came to beg for beer last night, very aggrieved, as if Yi Nan had bullied him "hardly".

Enki held his face in his hands and cried loudly: "You told me to build the boat like this. Now that the boat is built, I still don't know how to waterproof it..."

The young people behind Yi Nan were at a loss for a while, but the uncle who was paddling the sheepskin raft was smiling, as if he didn't think it was a big deal to watch the excitement.

Yi Nan leaned forward to observe carefully, and saw that Enki was also observing her through his fingers.

There was no tears in the eyes of this "old boy", but there was a completely sly look in Yi Nan's eyes.

Yi Nan was a little dumbfounded, knowing that Enki had already guessed that she held the most critical material in her hand.

So she turned her head and said to Guda: "Guda, go get that piece of natural asphalt—"

Guda: ...Natural asphalt, what is that?

Yi Nan: "It's the black and light piece you put in the gemstone bag..."

In her opinion, Guda brought so many fragmented stones, the most useful one was only that one.

But Gu Da had no memory of it at all, and asked dumbfounded: "I have this in my gemstone bag..."

At this moment Dumuzi stood up: "I will go with you."

The two men hurried back to the yard on the other side of the wall, and when they came back, they saw Yi Nan "criticize" Enki, accusing him of handling the bow and stern of the ship too hastily.

Enki accepted the lesson honestly, fished out the unsinkable boat, and modified the structure of the bow and stern.

He added a tall wooden beam in front of the keel as the bow, glued all the "masks" to the bow, and cut off all the excess parts.A semi-circular "beam" was also installed on the stern, and a thick layer of isinglass was applied to each joint.

Yi Nan is also doing something here.She asked Dumuzi to light a fire, and took out a refractory shallow pottery dish, and put the "natural asphalt" in the Guda gemstone bag into the pottery dish.

It didn't take long for this dark "gem" to melt naturally, turning into a viscous liquid substance.Enki went up to smell it, and felt a strange fragrance. He couldn't help stretching out his index finger, wanting to dip a little in it, but he was burned, so he quickly retracted it.

"Use this, put it on your boat, let it cool, put on one coat, let it cool again, put on another coat ... after about three or four coats, your boat is ready to go in the water."

Inan told Enki honestly: "But this thing can only ensure that the boat you build will not seep. As for how the various parts of the boat are firmly combined so that they will not fall apart when encountering wind and waves, this requires you and Eli Everyone has tried it themselves.”

Enki nodded, staring intently at the black sticky object in the pottery dish, his eyes full of hope.

"What's this called?" He suddenly raised his head and asked Yi Nan loudly.

"It's called natural asphalt." Yinan repeated.

"I guess, this kind of 'gem' is produced near Uruk, right?" Enki showed his sly little eyes again.

Here Guda is still scratching his head, he doesn't remember where he found this piece of "asphalt", anyway, he saw it in the warehouse of the temple, and it wasn't too heavy, so he took it with him - where did he find it? Know where it came from?

Unexpectedly, Dumuzi next to Guda nodded: "Yes, it is produced near Uruk. Sometimes it can be found on small hills. If you dig it, it should be a lot."

Inan: Exactly!

The natural bitumen reserves in the Mesopotamia Basin are quite high, which is closely related to the rich local oil and gas resources.

Dumuzi said honestly: "But before that, we only knew that this kind of thing will melt when heated and can be ignited, but the smell is very bad, and there is a lot of smoke. So we have seen many , but it never occurred to me to use it in shipbuilding."

"Until today, we finally know the usefulness of this thing."

When Dumuzi said this, he kept looking at Yi Nan who was "born to know it", his eyes were full of reverence.

"If Eridu needs it, I think we Uruk people will be happy to exchange it with you."

Dumuzi spoke so sincerely that even Enki nodded.

Yinan hurriedly struck while the iron was hot: "So, the two cities of Eridu and Uruk have their own strengths and weaknesses. If our two cities can maintain friendship, communicate with each other, and get what we need, I believe that we can cooperate , is far better than alienation or confrontation."

Hearing what she said, Enki sighed suddenly and said, "I sent someone to meet the witch of Uruk before, and told her about the trade between the two cities."

Yi Nan raised his eyebrows curiously: "What happened next?"

"She wants me to admit that Goddess Inanna is the real Lord God."

Yi Nan stretched out his hand and patted his forehead: This...

"I asked her why the two main gods can't coexist? She only said that whenever two gods exist at the same time, someone will definitely ask the two main gods who is stronger. Rather than not being able to answer at that time, it's better not to admit each other. .”

Yi Nan almost laughed: she really didn't expect the witch of Uruk to be such a "pragmatist", because she couldn't answer the question, she simply avoided it in advance.

It seems that after Wu's refusal, Uruk took the initiative to cut off the possibility of cooperating with Eridu, and he no longer knew about Eridu, and even thought Enki was bound to engage in this "lord god battle" with Inanna. ".

This is not the case.

Enki also did not regard Inanna as an imaginary enemy.

"So do you think the two main gods can coexist?" Yi Nan managed to suppress his smile and asked Enji seriously.

Enki immediately smiled too. He stared into Yinan's eyes and said, "The answer depends on you."

"You have problems to solve in Uruk. This answer depends on you, whether it can solve Uruk's problems satisfactorily."

Yi Nan showed no sign of weakness: "Indeed, but if I can solve the problem in Uruk, it will only benefit Eridu."

Enki immediately stared at Yi Nan without speaking.

Yi Nan was also attentive, looking at the face in front of him that had gone through the vicissitudes of time, this pair of eyes full of wisdom.

Enki's attitude has been expressed very clearly.

She even sensed that Enki was vaguely reminding her of something - about Uruk, about witches.

And she also expressed her attitude, and even put conditions on Enki.

Elidu is a magical city. It has a completely different development environment from Uruk, but it has also developed the scale and order it is today.Its people never stopped moving forward, which made Yinan feel a sense of crisis.

This is also a city that predicted the coming of kingship—the first line of the Sumerian King List could never be an "oracle", it could only be that someone foresaw the ebb and flow of power between "god" and "man" , leading to this conclusion.

Yi Nan stared at Enki, and Enki stared at her.

The two characters who are closest to the "god" seem to have completed all the necessary communication only by silently looking at each other.Yinan understood what Enki meant, and Enki also understood Yinan's conditions.

A deal appears to have been reached.

Although none of the people around them knew the truth, maybe only Dumuzi saw a little clue.

"what--"

Enki suddenly yelled, and everyone noticed that the earlier pottery dish had been removed from the fire, and the asphalt inside had started to solidify again, and it was no longer suitable for painting on the model ship in Enki's hand.

"Hurry up--"

Enki hurriedly moved the pottery dish to the flame again, watched nervously to see if the bitumen inside melted again, and kept saying, "I haven't even seen the effect of waterproofing yet—"

"And beer, the best beer—"

"Beautiful girl, kind boy, please leave this recipe and method to old Enki no matter what."

"Could it be that you have aroused Enki's gluttons, but you didn't give the formula? Do you want to see old Enki being greedy to death by you?"

Yi Nan almost wanted to laugh out loud: she liked the old man's temper so much.

"For the sake of buying barley from Uruk anyway, I give you the recipe for beer with both hands."

"But can you give me a copy of the hop seedlings too?"

"..."