As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. “Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. He travels to the end of the Earth, where he encounters Siduri, a female tavern keeper, who advises him: Facing the reality of his own death, he begins a desperate search for immortality. She raised her head, she saw me and spoke: ‘Who has brought this one here?’ Then I awoke like a man drained of blood who wanders alone in a waste of rushes like one whom the bailiff has seized and his heart pounds with terror.”Įnkidu dies, and Gilgamesh now realizes that heroic fame is no substitute for life. There was Ereshkigal the Queen of the Underworld and Belit-Sheri squatted in front of her, she who is recorder of the gods and keeps the book of death. In the house of dust which I entered were high priests and acolytes, priests of the incantation and of ecstasy there were servers of the temple, and there was Etana, that king of Kish whom the eagle carried to Heaven in the days of old. They who had stood in the place of the gods like Anu and Enlil, stood now like servants to fetch baked meats in the house of dust, to carry cooked meat and cold water from the waterskin. I entered the house of dust and I saw the kings of the earth, their crowns put away forever rulers and princes, all those who once wore kingly crowns and ruled the world in the days of old. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness. “There is the house whose people sit in darkness dust is their food and clay their meat. He turned his stare towards me, and he led me away to the palace of Irkalla, the Queen of Darkness, to the house from which none who enters ever returns, down the road from which there is no coming back. He fell on me and his claws were in my hair, he held me fast and I smothered then he transformed me so that my arms became wings covered with feathers. His was a vampire face, his foot was a lion’s foot, his hand was an eagle’s talon. The heavens roared, and earth rumbled back an answer between them stood I before an awful being, the sombre-faced manbird he had directed on me his purpose. Listen, my friend, this is the dream I dreamed last night. “It was I who cut down the cedar, I who leveled the forest, I who slew Humbaba and now see what has become of me. As Enkidu slept alone in his sickness, in bitterness of spirit he poured out his heart to his friend.
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