Tablet I, col. 2, 34–35: Creation of Enkidu by Aruru.
36–41: Description of Enkidu’s hairy body and of his life with the animals.
42–50: The hunter sees Enkidu, who shows his anger, as also his woe, at his condition.
3, 1–12: The hunter tells his father of the strange being who pulls up the traps which the hunter digs, and who tears the nets so that the hunter is unable to catch him or the animals.
19–24: The father of the hunter advises his son on his next expedition to take a woman with him in order to lure the strange being from his life with the animals.
Line 25, beginning “On the advice of his father,” must have set forth, in the original form of the episode, how the hunter procured the woman and took her with him to meet Enkidu.
Column 4 gives in detail the meeting between the two, and naïvely describes how the woman exposes her charms to Enkidu, who is captivated by her and stays with her six days and seven nights. The animals see the change in Enkidu and run away from him. He has been transformed through the woman. So far the episode. In the Assyrian version there follows an address of the woman to Enkidu beginning (col. 4, 34):
“Beautiful art thou, Enkidu, like a god art thou.”
We find her urging him to go with her to Erech, there to meet Gilgamesh and to enjoy the pleasures of city life with plenty of beautiful maidens. Gilgamesh, she adds, will expect Enkidu, for the coming of the latter to Erech has been foretold in a dream. It is evident that here we have again the later transformation of the Enkidu Epic in order to bring the two heroes together. Will it be considered too bold if we assume that in the original form the address of the woman and the construction of the episode were such as we find preserved in part in columns 2 to 4 of the Pennsylvania tablet, which forms part of the new material that can now be added to the Epic? The address of the woman begins in line 51 of the Pennsylvania tablet:
“I gaze upon thee, Enkidu, like a god art thou.”