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165 Figure 53 Anu, who besides his official spouse Antu had numerous concubines and (at least in one instance) ventured even far- ther afield, had as a result a great number of official and unofficial offspring; we have met so far Enki, Enlil, and Nin- mah, all three half brothers and half sister of each other (i.e. born of different mothers). It turns out that Anu had yet another, younger daughter, named Bau, who became the wife of Ninurta, Enlil's son by his half sister Ninmah. As far as one can judge from the texts, Ninurta and Bau (Fig. 53) led an immaculate marriage, unmarred by any infidelities. It was a marriage blessed by two sons and seven daughters, of whom Ninsun ("Lady Wild Cow") was the best-known one. This genealogy made her at one and the same time a granddaugh- ter of Anu as well as a granddaughter of Anu's son Enlil. (Enlil, it ought to be mentioned here, begot Ninurta on Nib- iru; after Enlil had espoused Ninlil on Earth, he was scrupu- lously monogamous). No less confusing was the makeup of Ninsun's offspring. On the one hand she was the mother of Gilgamesh. The Sumerian King Lists state that his father was the High Priest of the sacred precinct of Uruk; the Epic of Gilgamesh and other narrative texts concerning him assert that his father was Lugalbanda, the third ruler of Uruk. Since the first such ruler, Meskiaggasher, was both High Priest and king, the assump- tion is that Lugalbanda, too, held both posts. The upshot is that Ninsun, whether officially espoused to the mortal Lugal- banda or not, had sexual relations with him and bore him a son. Encounters in the GIGUNU