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By Root 259 0

This takes five tablets of Akkadian so there has been considerable compression; even so, some gaps are filled, as well as alternative matter provided at other points. It is, for example, perfectly natural that the Hittite weather-god should bestow the gift of courage in place of Akkadian Adad, to whom he holds an equivalent, though relatively superior, position. The trapper who snares Enkidu has an Akkadian name, Sangasu, meaning ‘death-striker’; but more important is the possibility, hinted here, that Gilgamesh came to Uruk only after his earlier wanderings in the world, and so the resentment of his ‘tyranny’ becomes more understandable. The forest journey is given an actual physical setting. It starts from the banks of the Euphrates where the heroes make their sacrifice to the Sun God, and from there a six days’ journey brings them to the Cedar Mountain. This is added confirmation for placing the mountain in a north westerly, rather than an easterly, direction, and agrees with the naming of Lebanon at the end of the fight with Humbaba in the Old Babylonian (Tell Iščali) fragment. But though in the Hittite tablet Humbaba threatens more alarmingly, the outcome is exactly the same and fits well between the Sumerian and Old Babylonian fragments. Further details come from other sources and are published by A. Falkenstein (Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 19, April 1960, 2, 65-71) and J. van Dijk, (Sumer, 15, 1959, i, 8-10) but the differences are not more than may be expected in oral tradition. A tablet from Ur, perhaps of the eleventh century B.C., contains another version of, and additions to, part of Tablet VII of the Ninevite recension describing the conversation between Shamash and Enkidu on the latter’s deathbed. It links up with the Sultantepe fragment and was published by C. J. Gadd in Iraq, 28, 1966, 105-121, with a commentary that includes interesting suggestions as to the name and character of ‘Siduri’, and consideration of the ‘Stone Things’ destroyed by Gilgamesh before crossing the Waters of Death.

Much of this new material has been incorporated into the text of the third edition of Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton, New Jersey, 1969, or in the Supplement, pp. 503-7, translated by A. R. Grayson. A fragment of text from Tell Harmal gives the ‘first’ dream of Gilgamesh on the mountain and there are additions to the conversation between Gilgamesh and Ishtar, and the episode of the Bull of Heaven. Important new light is thrown on Enkidu’s sickness and dreams by R. Stefanini (1969) Hittite material and by C. J. Gadd, loc. cit. (1966) with Middle Babylonian or Cassite period texts from Ur, perhaps of the early 11th century, which give an alternative to the Ninevite version and add considerably to the exchange between Enkidu and Shamash. The problem of the ‘gate’, whether it is still the ‘gate of the forest’, or whether it is not rather of forest wood but raised in Uruk, is discussed by I. M. Diakonoff (Bibliotheca Orientalis, XVIII, 1961, 61-67). I have taken the second alternative as most probable. The Stone Things are again discussed by C. J. Gadd, and by A. R. Millard (1964) publishing an Old Babylonian fragment which overlaps with Meissner, also D. Wiseman in Gilgames et sa legende (1960). Minor additions to Tablet X are also taken from the new third edition of Texts Relating to the Old Testament, and I have followed suggestions in the article by L. Matouš (BibliothecaOrientalis, XXI, 1964, 3-10) as well as from the various contributors to the article ‘Gilgamesh’ in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie, parts ¾, pp. 357-74. A clue to the nature of the plant of eternal youth comes from R. Campbell Thompson’s Dictionary of Assyrian Botany (London, 1949); and the amended first line of the epic is given in the Assyrian Dictionary of theOriental Institute of Chicago,7, 33b.

I have referred in this introduction to the discovery of new evidence for the existence of an historical Gilgamesh. The question is discussed, in Gilgameš et salégende, by W. G. Lambert, S. N. Kramer and in a short