An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic | Page 7

annihilate Gilgamesh if he dares to enter the cedar forest, and once more try to dissuade Gilgamesh from the undertaking.
"Thou art young, O Gish, and thy heart carries thee away, Thou dost not know what thou proposest to do." (lines 190-191)
They try to frighten Gilgamesh by repeating the description of the terrible Huwawa. Gilgamesh is still undaunted and prays to his patron deity Shamash, who apparently accords him a favorable "oracle" (t��rtu). The two heroes arm themselves for the fray, and the elders of Erech, now reconciled to the perilous undertaking, counsel Gilgamesh to take provision along for the undertaking. They urge Gilgamesh to allow Enkidu to take the lead, for
"He is acquainted with the way, he has trodden the road [to] the entrance of the forest." (lines 252-253)
The elders dismiss Gilgamesh with fervent wishes that Enkidu may track out the "closed path" for Gilgamesh, and commit him to the care of Lugalbanda--here perhaps an epithet of Shamash. They advise Gilgamesh to perform certain rites, to wash his feet in the stream of Huwawa and to pour out a libation of water to Shamash. Enkidu follows in a speech likewise intended to encourage the hero; and with the actual beginning of the expedition against Huwawa the tablet ends. The encounter itself, with the triumph of the two heroes, must have been described in the fourth tablet.

V.
Now before taking up the significance of the additions to our knowledge of the Epic gained through these two tablets, it will be well to discuss the forms in which the names of the two heroes and of the ruler of the cedar forest occur in our tablets.
As in the Meissner fragment, the chief hero is invariably designated as dGish in both the Pennsylvania and Yale tablets; and we may therefore conclude that this was the common form in the Hammurabi period, as against the writing dGish-g��(n)-mash [34] in the Assyrian version. Similarly, as in the Meissner fragment, the second hero's name is always written En-ki-du [35] (abbreviated from d��g) as against En-ki-d�� in the Assyrian version. Finally, we encounter in the Yale tablet for the first time the writing Hu-wa-wa as the name of the guardian of the cedar forest, as against Hum-ba-ba in the Assyrian version, though in the latter case, as we may now conclude from the Yale tablet, the name should rather be read Hu-ba-ba. [36] The variation in the writing of the latter name is interesting as pointing to the aspirate pronunciation of the labial in both instances. The name would thus present a complete parallel to the Hebrew name Howawa (or Hobab) who appears as the brother-in-law of Moses in the P document, Numbers 10, 29. [37] Since the name also occurs, written precisely as in the Yale tablet, among the "Amoritic" names in the important lists published by Dr. Chiera, [38] there can be no doubt that Huwawa or Hubaba is a West Semitic name. This important fact adds to the probability that the "cedar forest" in which Huwawa dwells is none other than the Lebanon district, famed since early antiquity for its cedars. This explanation of the name Huwawa disposes of suppositions hitherto brought forward for an Elamitic origin. Gressmann [39] still favors such an origin, though realizing that the description of the cedar forest points to the Amanus or Lebanon range. In further confirmation of the West Semitic origin of the name, we have in Lucian, De Dea Syria, �� 19, the name Kombabos [40] (the guardian of Stratonika), which forms a perfect parallel to Hu(m)baba. Of the important bearings of this western character of the name Huwawa on the interpretation and origin of the Gilgamesh Epic, suggesting that the episode of the encounter between the tyrant and the two heroes rests upon a tradition of an expedition against the West or Amurru land, we shall have more to say further on.
The variation in the writing of the name Enkidu is likewise interesting. It is evident that the form in the old Babylonian version with the sign du (i.e., d��g) is the original, for it furnishes us with a suitable etymology "Enki is good." The writing with d��g, pronounced du, also shows that the sign d�� as the third element in the form which the name has in the Assyrian version is to be read d��, and that former readings like Ea-bani must be definitely abandoned. [41] The form with d�� is clearly a phonetic writing of the Sumerian name, the sign d�� being chosen to indicate the pronunciation (not the ideograph) of the third element d��g. This is confirmed by the writing En-gi-d�� in the syllabary CT XVIII, 30, 10. The phonetic writing is, therefore, a warning against any endeavor to read the name by an Akkadian transliteration of the signs. This would not of