An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic | Page 4

he neglected to change some of his notes in which he still refers to the text as "late." [24] In addition to a copy of the text, accompanied by a good photograph, Dr. Langdon furnished a transliteration and translation with some notes and a brief introduction. The text is unfortunately badly copied, being full of errors; and the translation is likewise very defective. A careful collation with the original tablet was made with the assistance of Dr. Edward Chiera, and as a consequence we are in a position to offer to scholars a correct text. We beg to acknowledge our obligations to Dr. Gordon, the Director of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, for kindly placing the tablet at our disposal. Instead of republishing the text, I content myself with giving a full list of corrections in the appendix to this volume which will enable scholars to control our readings, and which will, I believe, justify the translation in the numerous passages in which it deviates from Dr. Langdon's rendering. While credit should be given to Dr. Langdon for having made this important tablet accessible, the interests of science demand that attention be called to his failure to grasp the many important data furnished by the tablet, which escaped him because of his erroneous readings and faulty translations.
The tablet, consisting of six columns (three on the obverse and three on the reverse), comprised, according to the colophon, 240 lines [25] and formed the second tablet of the series. Of the total, 204 lines are preserved in full or in part, and of the missing thirty-six quite a number can be restored, so that we have a fairly complete tablet. The most serious break occurs at the top of the reverse, where about eight lines are missing. In consequence of this the connection between the end of the obverse (where about five lines are missing) and the beginning of the reverse is obscured, though not to the extent of our entirely losing the thread of the narrative.
About the same time that the University of Pennsylvania Museum purchased this second tablet of the Gilgamesh Series, Yale University obtained a tablet from the same dealer, which turned out to be a continuation of the University of Pennsylvania tablet. That the two belong to the same edition of the Epic is shown by their agreement in the dark brown color of the clay, in the writing as well as in the size of the tablet, though the characters on the Yale tablet are somewhat cramped and in consequence more difficult to read. Both tablets consist of six columns, three on the obverse and three on the reverse. The measurements of both are about the same, the Pennsylvania tablet being estimated at about 7 inches high, as against 7 2/16 inches for the Yale tablet, while the width of both is 6 1/2 inches. The Yale tablet is, however, more closely written and therefore has a larger number of lines than the Pennsylvania tablet. The colophon to the Yale tablet is unfortunately missing, but from internal evidence it is quite certain that the Yale tablet follows immediately upon the Pennsylvania tablet and, therefore, may be set down as the third of the series. The obverse is very badly preserved, so that only a general view of its contents can be secured. The reverse contains serious gaps in the first and second columns. The scribe evidently had a copy before him which he tried to follow exactly, but finding that he could not get all of the copy before him in the six columns, he continued the last column on the edge. In this way we obtain for the sixth column 64 lines as against 45 for column IV, and 47 for column V, and a total of 292 lines for the six columns. Subtracting the 16 lines written on the edge leaves us 276 lines for our tablet as against 240 for its companion. The width of each column being the same on both tablets, the difference of 36 lines is made up by the closer writing.
Both tablets have peculiar knobs at the sides, the purpose of which is evidently not to facilitate holding the tablet in one's hand while writing or reading it, as Langdon assumed [26] (it would be quite impracticable for this purpose), but simply to protect the tablet in its position on a shelf, where it would naturally be placed on the edge, just as we arrange books on a shelf. Finally be it noted that these two tablets of the old Babylonian version do not belong to the same edition as the Meissner tablet above described, for the latter consists of two columns each on obverse and reverse, as against three columns each in the case of our two