* Ishtar’s declaration to Gilgames and the hero’s reply have
been frequently translated and summarized since the
discovery of the poem. Smith thought to connect this episode
with the “Descent of Ishtar to Hades,” which we shall meet
with further on in this History, but his opinion is no
longer accepted. The “Descent of Ishtar” in its present
condition is the beginning of a magical formula: it has
nothing to do with the acts of Gilgames.
** Tammuz-Adonis is the only one known to us among this long
list of the lovers of the goddess. The others must have been
fairly celebrated among the Chaldæans, since the few words
devoted to each is sufficient to recall them to the memory
of the reader, but we have not as yet found anything
bearing upon their adventures in the table of the ancient
Chaldæo-Assyrian classics, which had been copied out by a
Ninevite scribe for the use of Assur-bani-pal, the title of
the poems is wanting.
*** The text gives kappî, and the legend evidently refers
to a bird whose cry resembles the word meaning “my
wings.” The spotted sparrow-hawk utters a cry which may be
strictly understood and interpreted in this way.
**** This is evidently the origin of our fable of the
“Amorous Lion.”
Thou didst also love the shepherd Tabulu, who lavished incessantly upon thee the smoke of sacrifices, and daily slaughtered goats to thee; thou didst strike him and turn him into a leopard; his own servants went in pursuit of him, and his dogs followed his trail.* Thou didst love Ishullanu, thy father’s gardener, who ceaselessly brought thee presents of fruit, and decorated every day thy table. Thou raisedst thine eyes to him, thou seizedst him: ‘My Ishullanu, we shall eat melons, then shalt thou stretch forth thy hand and remove that which separates us.’ Ishullanu said to thee: ‘I, what dost thou require from me? O my mother, prepare no food for me, I myself will not eat: anything I should eat would be for me a misfortune and a curse, and my body would be stricken by a mortal coldness.’ Then thou didst hear him and didst become angry, thou didst strike him, thou didst transform him into a dwarf, thou didst set him up on the middle of a couch; he could not rise up, he could not get down from where he was. Thou lovest me now, afterwards thou wilt strike me as thou didst these.” **
* The changing of a lover, by the goddess or sorceress
who loves him, into a beast, occurs pretty frequently in
Oriental tales; as to the man changed by Ishtar into a
brute, which she caused to be torn by his own hounds, we may
compare the classic story of Artemis surprised at her bath
by Actseon.
** As to the misfortune of Ishullanu, we may compare the
story in the Abrabian Nights of the Fisherman and the
Genie shut up in the leaden bottle. The king of the Black
Islands was transformed into a statue from the waist to the
feet by the sorceress, whom he had married and afterwards
offended; he remained lying on a bed, from which he could
not get down, and the unfaithful one came daily to whip him.
“When Ishtar heard him, she fell into a fury, she ascended to heaven. The mighty Ishtar presented herself before her father Anu, before her mother Anatu she presented herself, and said: ‘My father, Grilgames has despised me. Grilgames has enumerated my unfaithfulnesses, my unfaithfulnesses and my ignominies.’ Anu opened his mouth and spake to the mighty Ishtar: ‘Canst thou not remain quiet now that Gilgames has enumerated to thee thy unfaithfulnesses, thy unfaithfulnesses and ignominies?’” But she refused to allow the outrage to go unpunished. She desired her father to make a celestial urus who would execute her vengeance on the hero; and, as he hesitated, she threatened to destroy every living thing in the entire universe by suspending the impulses of desire, and the effect of love. Anu finally gives way to her rage: he creates a frightful urus, whose ravages soon rendered uninhabitable the neighbourhood of Uruk the well-protected. The two heroes, Gilgames and Eabani, touched by the miseries and terror of the people, set out on the chase, and hastened to rouse the beast from its lair on the banks of the Euphrates in the marshes, to which it resorted after each murderous onslaught.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio in the New
York Museum. The original is about an inch and a half in
height.
A troop of three hundred valiant warriors penetrated into the thickets in three lines to drive the animal towards the heroes. The beast with head lowered charged them; but Eabani seized it with one hand by the right horn, and with the other by the tail, and forced it to rear. Gilgames at the same instant, seizing it by the leg, plunged his dagger into its heart. The beast being despatched, they celebrated their victory by a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and poured out a libation to Sharnash, whose protection had not failed them in this last danger. Ishtar, her projects of vengeance having been defeated, “ascended the ramparts of Uruk the well-protected. She sent forth a loud cry, she hurled forth a malediction: ‘Cursed be Gilgames, who has insulted me, and who has killed the celestial urus.’ Eabani heard these words of Ishtar, he tore a limb from the celestial urus and threw it in the face of the goddess: ‘Thou also I will conquer, and I will treat thee like him: I will fasten the curse upon thy sides.’ Ishtar assembled her priestesses, her female votaries, her frenzied women, and together they intoned a dirge over the limb of the celestial urus. Gilgames assembled all the turners in ivory, and the workmen were astonished at the enormous size of the horns; they were worth thirty mimæ of lapis, their diameter was a half-cubit, and both of them could contain six measures of oil.” He dedicated them to Shamash, and suspended them on the corners of the altar; then he washed his hands in the Euphrates, re-entered Uruk, and passed through the streets in triumph. A riotous banquet ended the day, but on that very night Eabani felt himself haunted by an inexplicable and baleful dream, and fortune abandoned the two heroes. Gilgames had cried in the intoxication of success to the women of Uruk: “Who shines forth among the valiant? Who is glorious above all men? Gilgames shines forth among the valiant, Gilgames is glorious above all men.” Ishtar made him feel her vengeance in the destruction of that beauty of which he was so proud; she covered him with leprosy from head to foot, and made him an object of horror to his friends of the previous day. A life of pain and a frightful death—he alone could escape them who dared to go to the confines of the world in quest of the Fountain of Youth and the Tree of Life which were said to be there hidden; but the road was rough, unknown, beset by dangers, and no one of those who had ventured upon it had ever returned. Gilgames resolved to brave every peril rather than submit to his fate, and proposed this fresh adventure to his friend Eabani, who, notwithstanding his sad forebodings, consented to accompany him. They killed a tiger on the way, but Eabani was mortally wounded in a struggle in which they engaged in the neighbourhood of Nipur, and breathed his last after an agony of twelve days’ duration.
“Gilgames wept bitterly over his friend Eabani, grovelling on the bare earth.” The selfish fear of death struggled in his spirit with regret at having lost so dear a companion, a tried friend in so many encounters. “I do not wish to die like Eabani: sorrow has entered my heart, the fear of death has taken possession of me, and I am overcome. But I will go with rapid steps to the strong Shamashnapishtim, son of Ubaratutu, to learn from him how to become immortal.” He leaves the plain of the Euphrates, he plunges boldly into the desert, he loses himself for a whole day amid frightful solitudes. “I reached at nightfall a ravine in the mountain, I beheld lions and trembled, but I raised my face towards the moon-god, and I prayed: my supplication ascended even to the father of the gods, and he extended over me his protection.” A vision from on high revealed to him the road he was to take. With axe and dagger in hand, he reached the entrance of a dark passage leading into the mountain of Mâshu,* “whose gate is guarded day and night by supernatural beings.”
* The land of Mâshu is the land to the west of the
Euphrates, coterminous on one part with the northern regions
of the Red Sea, on the other with the Persian Gulf; the name
appears to be preserved in that of the classic Mesene, and
possibly in the land of Massa of the Hebrews.