“Aruru washed her hands, broke off clay,
threw it on the field[103]
… created Enkidu, the hero, a lofty
offspring of the host of Ninib.”[104]
The description of Enkidu follows, with his body covered with hair like an animal, and eating and drinking with the animals. There follows an episode[105] which has no connection whatsoever with the Gilgamesh Epic, but which is clearly intended to illustrate how Enkidu came to abandon the life with the animals. A hunter sees Enkidu and is amazed at the strange sight—an animal and yet a man. Enkidu, as though resenting his condition, becomes enraged at the sight of the hunter, and the latter goes to his father and tells him of the strange creature whom he is unable to catch. In reply, the father advises his son to take a woman with him when next he goes out on his pursuit, and to have the woman remove her dress in the presence of Enkidu, who will then approach her, and after intercourse with her will abandon the animals among whom he lives. By this device he will catch the strange creature. Lines 14–18 of column 3 in the first tablet in which the father of the hunter refers to Gilgamesh must be regarded as a later insertion, a part of the reconstruction of the tale to connect the episode with Gilgamesh. The advice of the father to his son, the hunter, begins, line 19,
“Go my hunter, take with thee a woman.”
In the reconstructed tale, the father tells his son to go to Gilgamesh to relate to him the strange appearance of the animal-man; but there is clearly no purpose in this, as is shown by the fact that when the hunter does so, Gilgamesh makes precisely the same speech as does the father of the hunter. Lines 40–44 of column 3, in which Gilgamesh is represented as speaking to the hunter form a complete doublet to lines 19–24, beginning
“Go, my hunter, take with thee a woman, etc.”
and similarly the description of Enkidu appears twice, lines 2–12 in an address of the hunter to his father, and lines 29–39 in the address of the hunter to Gilgamesh.
The artificiality of the process of introducing Gilgamesh into the episode is revealed by this awkward and entirely meaningless repetition. We may therefore reconstruct the first two scenes in the Enkidu Epic as follows:[106]