Unreliable Narration

Of Mina-sarpilili-anda II, the only surviving record is this splendid bas-relief in which he presses the neck of his Hittite foe beneath one battle-shod foot while minions shoulder the spoils of a conquered city. In fact there was no war that year; a bored stone-carver was looking for preferment. He received an allowance of good wine. In a perfumed cloud of dust that loitered over the plain, Hittite ambassadors came to the king with golden bells and rosewater candy, birds in cages and spotted cats, and departed in peace. The king was beloved, laughed often, feared nothing, and died in his bed of poison. A carnelian image of his second-best wife, accurate to the last mole, was plucked from the dirt by a boy tending goats, sold, and spirited out of the country, rolled in a rug, on a ship that sank on a cloudless day. An image of his first wife, in chrysoprase, lies tightly packed in buried rubble for the next generation of archaeologists— should they prove worthy, persistent, and slyer than goatherds.