At this point Gilgamesh propounds a most natural question: How comes it, if what Parnapishtim says is true, that the latter is alive, while possessing all the traits of a human being? The eleventh tablet of the epic begins:
Gilgamesh speaks to him, to Parnapishtim, the far-removed:
"I gaze at thee in amazement, Parnapishtim.
Thy appearance is normal. As I am, so art thou.
Thy entire nature[936] is normal. As I am, so art thou.
Thou art completely equipped for the fray.[937]
Armor[938] (?) thou hast placed upon thee.
Tell me how thou didst come to obtain eternal life among the gods."
In reply, Parnapishtim tells the story of his escape from the common fate of mankind. The story is a long one and has no connection with the career of Gilgamesh. It embodies a recollection of a rain-storm that once visited a city, causing a general destruction, but from which Parnapishtim and his family miraculously escaped. The main purport of the tale is not to emphasize this miracle, but the far greater one that, after having been saved from the catastrophe, Parnapishtim should also have been granted immortal life. The moral, however, is that the exception proves the rule. With this tradition of the destruction of a certain place, there has been combined a nature myth symbolizing the annual overflow of the Euphrates, and the temporary disappearance of all land that this inundation brought about, prior to the elaborate canal system that was developed in the valley. It is the same myth that we have come across in the creation epic and which, as we have seen, was instrumental in moulding the advanced cosmological conceptions of the Babylonians.
In Parnapishtim's tale, the myth is given a more popular form. There is no attempt made to impart a scholastic interpretation to it. In keeping with what we have seen to be the general character of the Gilgamesh epic, the episode introduced at this point embodies popular traditions and, on the whole, popular conceptions. The spirit of the whole epic is the same that we find in the Thousand and One Nights or in the Arabian romance of Antar.