‘That sleep quite overcame me
Swiftly didst thou touch me, and didst awaken me, even thou.’ ”
Pir-napištim, in answer to this, tells Gilgameš what had been done to him, repeating the description of the preparation of his food in the same words as had been used to describe the ceremony (for such it apparently is), and ending by saying, “Suddenly I touched thee, (even) I, and thou awokest, (even) thou.” Thus putting beyond question the personality of the one who effected the transformation which was brought about, though he leaves out the word “man,” which hid from the hero the fact that a transformation had in consequence taken place in him. The ceremonies were not by any means finished, however, for the boatman or pilot had to take him to the place of lustration to be cleansed, and for the skin, with which he seems to have been covered, to fall off. The Babylonian patriarch then tells him of a wonderful plant which would make an old man young again, and Gilgameš gets possession of one of these. On his way to his own country in the company of the boatman or pilot, he stops to perform what seems to be a religious ceremony, at a well, when a serpent smells the plant,[10] and, apparently in consequence of that, a lion comes and takes it away. Gilgameš greatly laments his loss, saying that he had not benefited by the possession of this wonderful plant, but the lion of the desert had gained the advantage. After [pg 110] a journey only varied by the religious festivals that they kept, they at length reached Erech, the walled. Here, after a reference to the dilapidation of the place, and a statement seemingly referring to the offerings to be made if repairs had not, during his absence, been effected, the eleventh and most important tablet of the Gilgameš series comes to an end.
Of the twelfth tablet but a small portion exists, though fragments of more than one copy have been found. In this we learn that Gilgameš still lamented for his friend Êa-banî, whom he had lost so long before. Wishing to know of his present state and how he fared, he called to the spirit of his friend thus—
“Thou restest not the bow upon the ground,
What has been smitten by the bow surround thee.
The staff thou raisest not in thine hand,
The spirits (of the slain) enclose thee.
Shoes upon thy feet thou dost not set,
A cry upon earth thou dost not make: