The Epic of Gilgamesh - Anonymous [50]
For Gilgamesh, son of Ninsun, they weighed out their offerings; his dear wife, his son, his concubine, his musicians, his jester, and all his household; his servants, his stewards, all who lived in the palace weighed out their offerings for Gilgamesh the son of Ninsun, the heart of Uruk. They weighed out their offerings to Ereshkigal, the Queen of Death, and to all the gods of the dead. To Namtar, who is fate, they weighed out the offering. Bread for Neti the Keeper of the Gate, bread for Ningizzida the god of the serpent, the lord of the Tree of Life; for Dumuzi also, the young shepherd, for Enki and Ninki, for Endukugga and Nindukugga, for Enmul and Ninmul, all the ancestral gods, forbears of Enlil. A feast for Simlpae the god of feasting. For Samuqan, god of the herds, for the mother Ninhursag, and the gods of creation in the place of creation, for the host of heaven, priest and priestess weighed out the offering of the dead.
Gilgamesh, the son of Ninsun, lies in the tomb. At the place of offerings he weighed the bread-offering, at the place of libation he poured out the wine. In those days the lord Gilgamesh departed, the son of Ninsun, the king, peerless, without an equal among men, who did not neglect Enlil his master. O Gilgamesh, lord of Kullab, great is thy praise.
GLOSSARY OF NAMES
A SHORT description of the gods and of other persons and places mentioned in the Epic will be found in this Glossary. The gods were credited at different times with a variety of attributes and characteristics, sometimes contradictory; only such as are relevant to the material of the Gilgamesh Epic are given here. The small number of gods and other characters who play a more important part in the story are described in the Introduction; in their case a page reference to this description is given at the end of the Glossary note. Cross-references to other entries in the Glossary are indicated by means of italics.
ADAD: Storm-, rain-, and weather-god.
ANUNNAKI: Usually gods of the underworld, judges of the dead and offspring of Anu. See p. 28.
ANSHAN: A district of Elam in south-west Persia; probably the source of supplies of wood for making bows. Gilgamesh has a ‘bow of Anshan’.
ANTUM: Wife of Anu.
ANU: Sumerian An; father of gods, and god of the firmament, the ‘great above’. In the Sumerian cosmogony there was, first of all, the primeval sea, from which was born the cosmic mountain consisting of heaven, ‘An’, and earth, ‘Ki’; they were separated by Enlil, then An carried off the heavens, and Enlil the earth. Anu later retreated more and more into the background; he had an important temple in Uruk. See p. 23.
APSU: The Abyss; the primeval waters under the earth; in the later mythology of the Enuma Elish, more particularly the sweet water which mingled with the bitter waters of the sea and with a third watery element, perhaps cloud, from which the first gods were engendered. The waters of Apsu were thought of as held immobile underground by the ‘spell’ of Ea in a death-like sleep.
ARURU: A goddess of creation, she created Enkidu from clay in the image of Anu.
AYA: The dawn, the bride of the Sun God Shamash.
BELIT-SHERI: Scribe and recorder of the underworld gods.
BULL OF HEAVEN: A personification of drought created by Anu for Ishtar.
DILMUN: The Sumerian paradise, perhaps the Persian Gulf, sometimes described as ‘the place where the sun rises’ and ‘the Land of the Living’; the scene of a Sumerian creation myth and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Ziusudra, was taken by the gods to live for ever. See p. 39.
DUMUZI: The Sumerian form of Tammuz; a god of vegetation and fertility, and so of the underworld, also called ‘the Shepherd and ‘lord of the sheepfolds’. As the companion of Ningizzida ‘to all eternity’ he stands at the gate of heaven. In the Sumerian ‘Descent of Inanna’ he is the husband of the