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93 Ur was granted kingship— An eternal reign it was not granted... Unwilling to accept the inevitable and too devoted to the people of Ur to abandon them, Nannar and Ningal decided to stay put. It was daytime when the Evil Wind approached Ur; “of that day I still tremble,” Ningal wrote, “but of that day’s foul smell we did not flee.” As doomsday came, “a bitter la- ment was raised in Ur, but of its foulness we did not flee.” The divine couple spent the night of nightmares in the “ter- mite house,” an underground chamber deep inside their zig- gurat. By morning, as the venomous wind “was carried off from the city,” Ningal realized that Nannar was ill. She hast- ily put on garments and had the god carried out and away from Ur, the city that they loved. At least another deity was also harmed by the Evil Wind; she was Ninurta’s spouse Bau, who was alone in Lagash (for her husband was busy destroying the spaceport). Loved by the people, who called her “Mother Bau,” she was trained as a healing physician, and just could not force herself to leave. The lamentations record that “On that day, the storm caught up with the Lady Bau; as if she was a mortal, the storm caught up with her.” It is not clear how badly she was stricken, but subsequent records from Sumer suggest that she did not survive long thereafter. Eridu, Enki’s city, lying farthest to the south, was appar- ently at the edge of the Evil Wind’s path. We learn from The Eridu Lament that Ninki, Enki’s spouse, flew away from the city to a safe haven in Enki’s African Abzu: “Ninki, the Great Lady, flying like a bird, left her city.” But Enki himself de- parted from the city only far enough to get out of the Evil Wind’s way: “The Lord of Eridu stayed outside his city . . . for the fate of his city he wept with bitter tears.” Many of Eridu’s citizens followed him, camping in the fields at a safe dis- tance as they watched—for a day and a half—the storm “put its hand on Eridu.” Amazingly, the least affected of all the land’s major cen- ters was Babylon, for it lay beyond the storm’s northern edge. As the alert was sounded, Marduk contacted his father to Gone with the Wind