Place of the Tombs of Atuan

The Place of the Tombs of Atuan is the most ancient and sacred site in the Kargad Empire, a walled desert precinct that houses the nine standing stones known as the Tombs, the temples of the Godking and the Twin Gods, and the residence of the nameless Priestess called the Eaten One, who serves the Old Powers of the earth. It is a place defined by absolute separation—between the sacred and the profane, between men and women, between the living and the nameless ones who ruled before the world of men came to be. The entire structure of the Place is built around the maintenance of this separation, and the life of its inhabitants is governed by a rigid hierarchy of ritual, silence, and obedience.

Geography and Architecture

The Place of the Tombs of Atuan is located in a barren desert region of the Kargad Empire, a landscape of tawny plains and silvery mountains where nothing grows but sage, wire-grass, and desert herbs. The precinct itself is a walled compound that looks like a little town from a distance, containing several major buildings. The oldest and most imposing is the Hall of the Throne, a huge, low structure with patched walls and a crumbling dome, tawny and ruinous as the desert itself. Below it stands the Temple of the Godking, a showier building with a high portico and thick white columns with painted capitals, each a solid log of cedar brought from Hur-at-Hur by slaves. The Temple of the Twin Gods is a cube of stone, plastered white, windowless, with a low porch and door. The Big House serves as the dormitory and work quarters for the priestesses and novices, while the Small House is the private residence of the One Priestess, which no one may enter without her permission. Surrounding the crest of the hill behind the Hall of the Throne runs a massive wall of rock, laid without mortar and half fallen down in many places. Inside this loop stand the nine black stones of the Tombs themselves, eighteen to twenty feet high, crusted with grey and orange lichen, with vague carvings of shapes and signs. One stone is naked and black with a dull gloss, smooth to the touch. These stones are said to have stood since the time of the first men, planted in the darkness when the lands were raised up from the ocean's depths, older by far than the Godkings or the Twin Gods, older than light. They are the tombs of those who ruled before the world of men came to be, the ones not named.

The Priestess and Her Role

The central figure of the Place is the One Priestess, who is given no name but is called Arha, the Eaten One. She is selected as a child through a rigorous process: after the death of the previous Priestess, certain priestesses and wardens go forth across the desert seeking the girl-child born on the night of that death. The child must be sound of body and mind, and must reach the age of five unblemished before she is taken to the Place. At the year's end, she is taken to the Hall of the Throne, where her name is given back to the Nameless Ones, and she becomes the nameless one, the Priestess Ever Reborn. She lives alone in the Small House, and no one may enter without her permission, though the two High Priestesses, Kossil and Thar, take that permission for granted. Twice a year, at the full moon nearest the equinox of spring and autumn, she performs a blood sacrifice before the Throne, carrying a great brass basin full of smoking goat's blood and pouring it out at the foot of the standing black stone and over one of the fallen stones. She is the only person who may enter among the Tombs, and she sometimes goes there alone in the early morning to wander among the stones or sit and look up at the mountains.

Social Structure and Daily Life

The Place is home to a couple of hundred people, including priestesses, novices, eunuch wardens, guards, and slaves. The priestesses wear black robes and hoods, and the novices learn sacred songs, dances, histories, and the mysteries of whichever god they are dedicated to. Only Arha learns the rites of the Nameless Ones, taught by Thar, the High Priestess of the Twin Gods. The daily life of the girls is spent in work: spinning and weaving wool, planting and harvesting food, and performing chores such as fetching water from the river. A lower rock wall runs from the Tomb Wall, making a long irregular semicircle about the hill and cutting the Place in two: on one side the temples and houses of the priestesses and wardens, on the other the quarters of the guards and slaves. No men set foot upon the inner ground of the Place, and even the Godking, when he came to enact the rites of his own temple, could not enter among the Tombstones and had to eat and sleep outside the wall. The guards, on certain holy festivals, attend the procession of the priestesses but do not enter the portals of the temples.

The Tombs and the Old Powers

The nine stones of the Tombs are the central mystery of the Place. They are the tombs of those who ruled before the world of men came to be, the ones not named, and she who serves them has no name. The stones are crusted with lichen, and on some, vague carvings can be seen or felt with the fingers. One stone is naked and black with a dull gloss. The Tombs are older by far than the Godkings or the Twin Gods, older than light. The Place is the most ancient and sacred of all places in the Four Lands of the Kargish Empire. The Old Powers of the earth are not for men to use, and the Place is built around the containment and service of these powers. The Priestess's role is to maintain the balance between the living and the nameless ones, to perform the rituals that keep the powers contained, and to be the living vessel through which the Nameless Ones are served. The Place is a site of profound dread and awe, where the boundaries between the human and the inhuman, the living and the dead, are constantly negotiated through ritual and silence.

Narrative Significance

The Place of the Tombs of Atuan is the setting for the second book of the Earthsea Cycle, The Tombs of Atuan, and is the location where Ged, now a young wizard, will later come in search of the lost half of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. It is a place of absolute darkness and silence, a counterpoint to the School for Wizards on Roke, and a realm where the Old Powers of the earth hold sway. The Place embodies the principle that evil is of earth, and that the Old Powers are not for men to use. It is a place where the shadow that Ged loosed might find a foothold, and where the namelessness of the Priestess mirrors the namelessness of the shadow. The Place is a symbol of the ancient, pre-human forces that underlie the world of men, and its rituals and prohibitions represent the fragile human attempt to contain and propitiate those forces.