After these boring chapters I feel like shifting onto simple, everyday stuff. Honestly, mysterious reader, I put a lot of effort in calligraphy to make my native language as understandable as possible... for what result? I still don't know if I should allow anyone to read this! Hell, humans are never short of praise for Freyja or Xihe, great and bright, but me? Who cares about my choices? My... no, forget it. I must avoid this childish form of envy. Glory is only partly in our hands. We can perfectly succeed at everything without effort or fail despite hard work.

Yes, life seems unfair in this regard. It is difficult to know what will be appropriate or valued in advance. Therefore, luck decides. That's how it is. So, instead of being bound to the impossible task of always foreseeing, it is better to act. If action becomes its own end, nothing can break our resolve! Someone who works without worrying about the world is free to create what he pleases. He will get as strong as necessary for this purpose, inevitably. The greatest ones do not wait for anyone, they act according to their own will. In the end, do I even want to be renowned?

What the hell am I talking about? Let's speak about my city instead, Uruk. Nobody planned to set up a town in this remote area. However, Enlil had an assembly erected for my kind, which was supposed to be used for diplomatic meetings on neutral ground. Its builders needed to stay on site and the proximity of a holy monument attracted nearby tribes. The « temple » required resources, which called for manpower. Fortune grew this way, by new opportunities.

Present-day folks tend to consider their ancestors more « primitive » than they were. In reality, human technology has been undergoing a critical revolution for the past thousand years, due to a sudden widespread adoption of apprenticeship and the development of the first furnaces. New generations adapt to what they are able to do and are, actually, pretty imaginative. Our arid lands are characterized by having developed very early clay-based masonry, for example, where northern territories, especially those supported by Atlanteans, rely on wood, more abundant and therefore less complicated to harness.

The agricultural progress has obviously led to the implementation of irrigation canals. It is them which really transformed everything. Enki loves to repeat how humans rediscovered construction methods on their own. He seems to forget that because of his laws, these poor souls have wasted centuries looking for a way to regulate water flow. The work was completed during King Etana's reign. A stern monarch, well educated, widely loved and above all a close friend of Utu. The character was fascinated by fecundity, being himself infertile.

Since I was not tied to the oath of Enki, at this time, I had the leisure to use my knowledge to the benefit of mortals. I believe it was the first time someone came to ask for my help. Mehr'El'Ennis was pushing me to return into society, so... why not? I offered a plant that cures sterility. In a way, it foreshadowed my upcoming office as a goddess. This decision would earn me a reprimand and became a habit. I often voice doubts about the decisions of our spiritual guide, you might say. My partners regularly call me an « oath breaker »!

Mortals, who poorly understand the old Murrean language, began to tell that I had « stolen » from our lovely Enki his sacred decrees. In particular those which organize all civilization. A rather poetic way of interpreting things, I suppose. Anyway I am digressing. Agriculture, so, has changed thanks to the irrigation canals expansion. Uruk was for a long time seen as a symbolic location with no practical use, yet advantageously set in relation to the neighboring river, the Euphrates. It was one of those towns that benefited the most from these improvements, with the digging of genuine streams, which will speed up goods transportation.

Business suddenly halted during the era. The irreversible failure of all negotiations between the self-proclaimed « zealots », a group of traditionalists led by a knight of Mû, Osiris, and us, caused massive damage. They exiled themselves much, much further west, settling on the shores of a magnificent river, the Nile. Our relationships will from then on swing between cordial neutrality and frank hostility, depending to the current century's hardships. Afterwards, Anu decided on a whim to invade Uruk's temple to make it his private residence. A choice that will propel this site as the center of all human politics.

Nevertheless, it will only be after my arrival that Enlil's « House of Heaven » grows to become dominant. I had previously lived as a nomad in the kingdom of Kish, so the building offered me a permanent home. This place and its surroundings then gradually slipped under my care. It was now my city, as much as Anu's! My previous involvement in royal issues (I had given offspring to a glorious king, you know) motivated aspiring monarchs to come and seek my blessing. I was in a position to approve rulers, in a ceremony that I will spare you the details of.

My city's influence starts to outshine that of its neighbors. Almost everything is decided here. The other gods think we are on the verge of a golden age centered on Uruk. Your kind is scary, when we think about it in retrospect. Ten millennia ago, you lived in mud huts. Culture was gone. Nothing was left. Today, people are starting to develop engineering techniques once again. Turn your head for a moment and everything changes!

I can see my role in the next millennium taking shape: making humanity comfortable with writing. For now, everyone has kept this tendency to consider the very act as 'divine' in nature. Those who watch me write this journal have such awe in their eyes that one would think my ramblings could alter galactic history! That's a problem, because these morons do not keep any written material if it comes from them. They crush their tablets to dust after use, afraid of our hypothetical wrath! You see, Enki, this is why your doctrine is dangerous. You must not impose restrictions without explaining why!

Nowadays, because of taboos, these unfortunate individuals are too easily frightened. If you repress education, they foolishly deduce that knowledge itself is harmful! Still, you refuse to listen to my advises and underestimate them daily. So I have to play the villainous maverick. For that is also my duty, in the end, to oppose your blindness, to bring light.