The Babylonian Story of the Deluge as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh / The Discovery of the Tablets at Nineveh by Layard, Rassam and Smith

by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge

The Eighth Tablet.

In this lament he calls Enkidu his brave friend and the "panther of the desert," and refers to their hunts in the mountains, and to their slaughter of the bull of heaven, and to the overthrow of Khumbaba in the forest of cedar, and then he asks him:

"What kind of sleep is this which hath laid hold upon thee?
"Thou starest out blankly (?) and hearest me not!"

But Enkidu moved not, and when Gilgamish touched his breast his heart was still. Then laying a covering over him page 50as carefully as if he had been his bride, he turned away from the dead body and in his grief roared like a raging lion and like a lioness robbed of her whelps.