In “Arthur” by the Riv­er Tigris, set in 1876, King Arthur finds him­self in a dire sit­u­a­tion. Unable to work due to the ram­pant plague and cholera, he sends a telegram to the Trustees of the British Muse­um express­ing his desire to cut short his expe­di­tion. The curt reply from S. McAl­lis­ter Jones, Sec­re­tary to the British Muse­um, empha­sizes the need for cau­tion but does not pro­vide the escape Arthur longs for. Trapped in Nin­eveh with the pres­sure of dis­cov­ery loom­ing over him, Arthur turns to the dis­card­ed debris of past archae­o­log­i­cal teams, div­ing into the heaps of chipped tiles and pot­sherds.

While sift­ing through the mate­r­i­al, he uncov­ers a strik­ing cobalt tablet, a por­tion of the *Epic of Gil­gamesh* unfa­mil­iar to him. The tablet res­onates deeply, fea­tur­ing themes of loss as Gil­gamesh returns home a bro­ken man. Intrigu­ing­ly, it con­tains a note refer­ring to a junior scribe and ded­i­cat­ing the work not to the typ­i­cal deity Nabu, but to an enig­mat­ic god­dess, Nis­a­ba. Reflect­ing on Mesopotami­an lore, Arthur con­sid­ers how rivers serve as vital life­lines, con­nect­ing past and future, life and death, mir­ror­ing the human expe­ri­ence of grief and loss.

Amidst this con­tem­pla­tion, Mah­moud arrives with news of a young Yazi­di woman seen trav­el­ing alone, which imme­di­ate­ly piques Arthur’s inter­est. Believ­ing it to be Leila, a woman who pre­dict­ed dis­as­ter years pri­or, Arthur’s hope ignites. Despite Mah­moud’s cau­tion about uncer­tain­ty and dan­ger, Arthur rush­es to pre­pare for the jour­ney to Cas­trum Kefa, where Leila’s sis­ter resides. Deter­mined to find her, he insists on set­ting out, and Mah­moud, rec­og­niz­ing the dan­gers Arthur would face alone, decides to accom­pa­ny him.

Thus, in mid-August, equipped with min­i­mal pro­vi­sions, Arthur embarks on a quest along the Riv­er Tigris, leav­ing behind Nin­eveh and a piece of him­self among the arti­facts that tell sto­ries of a lost world .