Absalom and Achitophel advice of the double agent Hushai over the good advice of Achitophel. Achitophel, realising that the rebellion is doomed to failure, goes home and hangs himself. Absalom is killed (against David's explicit commands) after getting caught by his hair in the thick branches of a great oak tree: "His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on" (NRSV 2 Sam. 18:9). The death of his son, Absalom, causes David enormous personal grief. A second allegory in the poem, beginning on line 425, is the
Palm Tree King the Palm Tree King, but he seems to be the only one of the "Slain Heroes" to have escaped from Ninurta, and remains free to continue his mischief in the world. Palm Tree King The Palm Tree King was one of the monsters later known as the "Slain Heroes" in the Sumerian epic, Lugale, which centred on the quest of Ninurta (a.k.a. Lugalbanda) to recover the Tablets of Destiny, which were stolen by the Slain Heroes, from Ninurta's father, Enlil, the angry, jealous God of Air, and early head of the Sumerian pantheon (though replaced as other gods came into