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273 went out and smote the camp of the Assyrians, an hundred and fourscore and five thousand. And when they (the people of Jerusalem) arose early in the morning, lo and behold: they (the Assyrians) were all dead corpses. (II Kings 19:35) Enki's chief emissary, named Isimud in the Sumerian texts and Usmu in the Akkadian versions, inevitably played a role in the sexual shenanigans of his master. In the "myth" of Enki and Ninharsag, in which Enki's efforts to obtain a male successor by his half sister were related, Isimud/Usmu first acted as a confidant and later as the provider of a variety of fruits with which Enki attempted to cure himself of the paral- ysis with which Ninharsag had afflicted him. When Inanna/ Ishtar came to Eridu to obtain the ME's, it was Isimud/Usmu who made the arrangements for the visit. Later on, when the sobered-up Enki realized that he was tricked out of important ME's, it was his faithful Sukkal who was ordered to pursue Inanna (who had fled in her "Boat of Heaven") to retrieve the ME's. Isimud/Usmu was sometimes referred to in the texts as "two faced." This curious description, it turns out, was a factual one; for in both statues and on cylinder seals he was indeed shown with two faces (Fig. 94). Was he deformed at birth, a genetic aberration, or was there some profound reason for depicting him so? While no one seems to know, it occurs to us that this two-facedness might have reflected this emis- sary's celestial association (see box at the end of this chapter). There was something unusual also about the Sukkal of Inanna /Ishtar, whose name was Ninshubur. The enigma was that Ninshubur sometimes appeared to be masculine, at which times the scholars translate his title as "chamberlain, vizier"; and at other times Ninshubur appears to be feminine, at which times she is called "chambermaid.". The question is, was Ninshubur bisexual or asexual? An androgynous, a eunuch, or what? Ninshubur acts as the confidante of Inanna/Ishtar during her courtship with Dumuzi, in which role she is treated (or assumed to be) female; Thorkild Jacobsen, in The Treasures Angels and Other Emissaries