O Eabani, change thy ...
Shamash loves Gilgamesh,
Anu, Bel, and Ea have given him wisdom.
Before thou comest from the mountain
Gilgamesh in Uruk will see thy dream.[890]
Dreams play an important part in the epic. They constitute the regular means of communication between man and the gods, so regular that at times the compilers of the epic do not find it necessary to specify the fact, but take it for granted. To Gilgamesh, Eabani's coming is revealed and he asks his mother Aruru to interpret the dream.
The third and fourth tablets take us back to the history of Uruk. Gilgamesh, aided by his patron Shamash, succeeds in gaining Eabani as a 'companion' in a contest that is to be waged against Khumbaba, who threatens Uruk. The name of this enemy is Elamitic, and it has been customary to refer the campaign against him to the tradition recorded by Berosus of a native uprising against Elamitic rule, which took place about 2400 B.C.[891] It must be said, however, that there is no satisfactory evidence for this supposition. Elam, lying to the east of the Euphrates, was at all times a serious menace to Babylonia. Hostilities with Elam are frequent before and after the days of Hammurabi. If Gilgamesh, as seems certain, is a Cassite,[892] the conflict between him and Khumbaba would represent a rivalry among Cassitic or Elamitic hordes for the possession of Uruk and of the surrounding district. While the Cassites do not come to the front till the eighteenth century, at which time the center of their kingdom is Nippur, there is every reason to believe that they were settled in the Euphrates Valley long before that period. The course of conquest—as of civilization in Babylonia—being from the south to the north, we would be justified in looking for the Cassites in Uruk before they extended their dominion to Nippur. At all events, the conflict between Gilgamesh and Khumbaba must be referred to a much more ancient period than the rise of the city of Babylon as a political center.
Shamash and Gilgamesh promise Eabani royal honors if he will join friendship with them.
Come, and on a great couch,
On a fine couch he[893] will place thee.