The Ship of Ishtar by A. Merritt

Book Details

John Kenton experiences eternity in one night when he becomes a pawn in the cosmic struggle between the Babylonian gods Nergal, the Destroyer, the Lord of Death, and Ishtar, the Mother, Goddess of Life. An academic, Kenton, contemplating a curious artifact from an archeological dig, is pulled from his quiet cultured New York apartments to treachery and war on the vast enchanted seas the ship sails upon.

The Ship of Ishtar – A queer, inscribed block of stone found in the ruins of Babylon! And out of it came a call, strong across the centuries, from an ancient, enchanted sea, where sailed—The Ship of Ishtar
Chapter I – The Block From Babylon
Chapter II – The First Adventure
Chapter III – The Sin Of Zarpanit
Chapter IV – “Am I Not—Woman?”
Chapter V – Slave Of The Ship
Chapter VI – Under The Lash Of Zachel
Chapter VII – The Chains Are Loosed
Chapter VIII – The Snaring Of Sharane
Chapter IX –  Black Priest Strikes
Chapter X – Down The Rope Of Sound
Chapter XI – The Isle Of Sorcerers
Chapter XII – The King Of The Two Deaths
Chapter XIII – “Ishtar! Show Thy Face!”
Chapter XIV –  Of The Black Priest
Chapter XV – The Wakening Of Sharane
Chapter XVI – To The Open Sea
Chapter XVII – The Ship’s Last Battle
Chapter XVIII – The Broken Toy!

Abraham Grace Merritt (1884–1943) – known by his byline, A. Merritt – was born in Beverly, New Jersey. A highly successful writer and editor, Merritt made $25,000 per year by 1919, and at the end of his life was earning $100,000 yearly—exceptional sums for the period.

The Ship of Ishtar was first published in six installments in Argosy All-Story magazine, November 8 – December 13, 1924.

The Ship of Ishtar contains 9 illustrations.

Files:

1. Merritt-TheShipOfIshtar.epub

Excerpt: The Ship of Ishtar

Chapter I

The Block From Babylon

JOHN stared down at the great block, vaguely puzzled, vaguely disturbed. Strange, he thought, yes, strange, indeed, how all his unrest, his formless longings, his haunting unhappiness seemed to center upon it. It was as though the block drew them to it—like a magnet of stone. And was there subtle promise in that inexplicable focusing?

He stirred impatiently; drew out again Forsyth’s letter. It had come to him three days before, that message from the old archaeologist who, by means of Kenton’s wealth, was sifting for its age-long-lost secrets the dust of what had once been all-conquering Babylon.

Eagerly had Kenton desired, eagerly had he planned, to go with that expedition. All his life the past had called to him. During all his years he had hearkened to its calling. He had wandered in the forgotten places; had slept upon the sites of forgotten civilizations, dead empires, vanished cities. In those years he had let love pass him by; had thrilled to ghostly romance rather than to living. Scholarly, half an ascetic, if he amassed no lore of the heart he garnered another knowledge vivid enough to make savants listen with respect when he spoke.

But on the very eve of his sailing, America had entered into the World War. And Kenton had bade Forsyth go without him. He himself had gone into training for a commission; he had fought and been wounded in Belleau Wood; had been invalided home. Hag-ridden by a great restlessness, thus he had returned; his attitude toward life, like thousands of others, profoundly changed. The world he knew had lost its zest; the one in which he could be happy he did not know where to find; he could not formulate even what it might be. The war had turned the present to quick-sand beneath his feet: worse, it had destroyed that bridge to the past over which his soul had been gay to tread.

Yet something in Forsyth’s letter had touched with life an interest he had believed dead; had evoked specter of that once familiar span between the then and the now: there was an echo within him as from some far, faint summoning voice bidding that old self of his to awaken—to awaken and to—beware!

And with a certain grim wonder he had found himself awaiting with impatience the arrival of the thing the letter had promised.

It had been cleared through the customs that afternoon—the block from Babylon. Alone, with an ever more eager curiosity, he had opened the crate that held it. Nested within that crate among cotton strips and soft sheathings of reeds had been the great stone block. Stone? Then why had it been so curiously light?

Again that thought came to him as he stood there beside it. The long mirror at the end of the room reflected him as he mused. Slender, a little above the medium height, face dark and keen, suggestion of the hawk in it with the thin, curved nose and clear blue eyes set widely apart, chin a bit pointed and cleft. And at the corners of the firm lips and deep within the clear eyes a touch of bitterness and of weary disillusionment—the hallmark of the war. Such was John Kenton as the long mirror showed him on the night-dawn of his great adventure.

He had read once more the letter, which Forsyth had written:

I send you the block because it bears a record of Sargon of Akkad, one of the few ever discovered of that king. It is unusual in many ways. Frankly, I have not been able to discover its purpose. I send it to you to amuse you in your convalescence: with the leisure time at your disposal you may be able to interpret what I, in the press of immediate work, cannot.

In the inscriptions upon it there is over and over again the name of Ishtar, Mother Goddess, Goddess of Love, Goddess of War and Wrath and Vengeance—as well. It is mostly in this last aspect of her that I read the symbols. The name of Nabu, the Babylonian God of Wisdom, appears many times; but text and context are so mutilated that, beyond words that seem to carry a warning of some kind, the references to Nabu are undecipherable. The name of Nergul, God of the Assyrian Underworld, appears frequently. But here, too, the text is too far gone to reconstruct—at least, in the little time that I have.

There are other names: Zarpanit—a woman’s, Alusar—a man’s. In the Babylonian pantheon, as you know, Zarpanit or Sarpanit was the wife of the God Bel Meredach, and a lesser form of Ishtar. But in the absence of certain characters I believe that the Zarpanit referred to here was an actual woman, probably some priestess of the goddess. As the name of Alusar occurs always near the name of Nergal he was probably a priest of that exceedingly grim deity.

We found the block in the mound called ‘Amran, just south of the Oser or “palace” of Nabopolassor. There is evidence that the ‘Amran mound is the site of E-Sagilla, the ziggurat or terraced temple which was the Home of the Gods in Babylon. It must have been held in considerable reverence, for only so would it have been saved from the destruction of the city by Sennacherib and afterward have been placed in the rebuilt temple.

Excerpt From: Abraham Merritt. “The Ship of Ishtar.”