Mythology

have already seen, and confirms what the scorpion-man, Shamash, and Siduri have already told him, that the gods have reserved immortality for themselves and have decreed death as the lot of mankind. Utnapishtim shows Gilgamesh that he cannot even resist sleep, much less the final sleep of death. As Gilgamesh prepares to depart disappointed, Utnapishtim, as a parting gift, tells him of a plant which has the property of making the old young again, but in order to get it he will have to dive to the bottom of the sea. Gilgamesh does so and brings up the wonder-working plant. On his way back to Erech he stops by a pool to bathe and change his clothes; while he is doing this a serpent smells the odour of the plant and carries it off, sloughing its skin as it goes. This feature of the story is clearly an aetiological myth explaining why the serpent is able to renew its life by casting its old skin. So the quest has failed, and the episode closes with the picture of Gilgamesh sitting by the shore and lamenting his misfortune. He returns empty-handed to Erech, and here the epic probably ended. But, in the form in which we have it now, an additional tablet has been appended, making the twelfth and final tablet. It has been shown by Professors Gadd and Kramer that this tablet is a direct translation from the Sumerian. It has also been shown that the beginning of the tablet is a continuation of another episode in the complex of Gilgamesh myths. This is the myth of Gilgamesh and the Huluppu-tree. It is evidently an aetiological myth explaining the origin of the sacred drum, the pukku, and its ritual use. According to this myth, Inanna, who is Ishtar, had taken a huluppu-tree from the banks of the Euphrates, and planted it in her garden, intending to make her bed and chair from its wood. When hostile forces prevented her from carrying out her purpose, Gilgamesh came to her help. In gratitude she gave him a pukku and a mikku made from the base and crown of the tree respectively. These two objects have been interpreted by scholars as a magic drum and a magic drum-stick. It may be remarked in passing that the big Lilissu-drum and its drum-sticks played an important part in Akkadian ritual; the description of its making and the rituals which accompanied it is given in Thureau-Dangin’s Rituels accadiens. Smaller drums were also used in Akkadian ritual, and the pukku may have been such a drum. Tablet twelve opens with Gilgamesh lamenting the loss of his pukku and his mikku, which have somehow disappeared into the underworld. Enkidu undertakes to go down into the underworld and recover the lost objects. Gilgamesh advises him as to the observance of certain rules of behaviour in order that he may not be seized and held there. Enkidu breaks all these rules and is seized and held in the underworld. Gilgamesh then appeals to Enlil for help, in vain, then to Sin, also in vain, and finally to Ea who tells Nergal to make a hole in the ground to allow the spirit of Enkidu to ascend. ‘The spirit of Enkidu, like a wind-puff, issued forth from the nether world.’ Gilgamesh begs Enkidu to describe the order of the underworld and the state of the dwellers therein. Enkidu tells Gilgamesh that the body which he has loved and embraced is devoured by vermin and filled with dust. Gilgamesh throws himself on the ground and weeps. The last part of the tablet is badly mutilated, but it appears to describe the difference between the lot in the underworld of those who have received proper funeral rites and the miserable state of those who have not. Here the Gilgamesh cycle ends. It clearly embodies a mass of early Sumerian and Akkadian myth and folklore. Some of the myths contained in it come under the head of ritual myths,

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