<blockquote>The watching crowd parted, and the two men within turned to face Shamhat. She swore silently. Not just ‘big’ visitors—the biggest. She barely kept herself from bowing to Gilgamesh. As a temple’s head priestess, even here in Uruk’s most distant village with more hunters and herders than farmers, she was his equal in honor.
But she did approach the king for the second time in her life. “In the name of Morning Inanna, welcome.”</blockquote>
