An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic | Page 3

on
the obverse and 6 on the reverse), appears to be a description of the
weapons of Gilgamesh with which he arms himself for an
encounter--presumably the encounter with Humbaba or Huwawa, the
ruler of the cedar forest in the mountain. [14] The latter deals with the
building operations of Gilgamesh in the city of Erech. A text in
Zimmern's Sumerische Kultlieder aus altbabylonischer Zeit (Leipzig,
1913), No. 196, appears likewise to be a fragment of the Sumerian
version of the Gilgamesh Epic, bearing on the episode of Gilgamesh's
and Enkidu's relations to the goddess Ishtar, covered in the sixth and

seventh tablets of the Assyrian version. [15]
Until, however, further fragments shall have turned up, it would be
hazardous to institute a comparison between the Sumerian and the
Akkadian versions. All that can be said for the present is that there is
every reason to believe in the existence of a literary form of the Epic in
Sumerian which presumably antedated the Akkadian recension, just as
we have a Sumerian form of Ishtar's descent into the nether world, and
Sumerian versions of creation myths, as also of the Deluge tale. [16] It
does not follow, however, that the Akkadian versions of the Gilgamesh
Epic are translations of the Sumerian, any more than that the Akkadian
creation myths are translations of a Sumerian original. Indeed, in the
case of the creation myths, the striking difference between the
Sumerian and Akkadian views of creation [17] points to the
independent production of creation stories on the part of the Semitic
settlers of the Euphrates Valley, though no doubt these were worked
out in part under Sumerian literary influences. The same is probably
true of Deluge tales, which would be given a distinctly Akkadian
coloring in being reproduced and steadily elaborated by the Babylonian
literati attached to the temples. The presumption is, therefore, in favor
of an independent literary origin for the Semitic versions of the
Gilgamesh Epic, though naturally with a duplication of the episodes, or
at least of some of them, in the Sumerian narrative. Nor does the
existence of a Sumerian form of the Epic necessarily prove that it
originated with the Sumerians in their earliest home before they came
to the Euphrates Valley. They may have adopted it after their conquest
of southern Babylonia from the Semites who, there are now substantial
grounds for believing, were the earlier settlers in the Euphrates Valley.
[18] We must distinguish, therefore, between the earliest literary form,
which was undoubtedly Sumerian, and the origin of the episodes
embodied in the Epic, including the chief actors, Gilgamesh and his
companion Enkidu. It will be shown that one of the chief episodes, the
encounter of the two heroes with a powerful guardian or ruler of a
cedar forest, points to a western region, more specifically to Amurru, as
the scene. The names of the two chief actors, moreover, appear to have
been "Sumerianized" by an artificial process, [19] and if this view turns
out to be correct, we would have a further ground for assuming the tale

to have originated among the Akkadian settlers and to have been taken
over from them by the Sumerians.

III.
New light on the earliest Babylonian version of the Epic, as well as on
the Assyrian version, has been shed by the recovery of two substantial
fragments of the form which the Epic had assumed in Babylonia in the
Hammurabi period. The study of this important new material also
enables us to advance the interpretation of the Epic and to perfect the
analysis into its component parts. In the spring of 1914, the Museum of
the University of Pennsylvania acquired by purchase a large tablet, the
writing of which as well as the style and the manner of spelling verbal
forms and substantives pointed distinctly to the time of the first
Babylonian dynasty. The tablet was identified by Dr. Arno Poebel as
part of the Gilgamesh Epic; and, as the colophon showed, it formed the
second tablet of the series. He copied it with a view to publication, but
the outbreak of the war which found him in Germany--his native
country--prevented him from carrying out this intention. [20] He,
however, utilized some of its contents in his discussion of the historical
or semi-historical traditions about Gilgamesh, as revealed by the
important list of partly mythical and partly historical dynasties, found
among the tablets of the Nippur collection, in which Gilgamesh occurs
[21] as a King of an Erech dynasty, whose father was Â, a priest of
Kulab. [22]
The publication of the tablet was then undertaken by Dr. Stephen
Langdon in monograph form under the title, "The Epic of Gilgamish."
[23] In a preliminary article on the tablet in the Museum Journal, Vol.
VIII, pages 29-38, Dr. Langdon took the