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THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH

AN ENGLISH VERSION WITH AN INTRODUCTION

N. K. Sandars

REVISED EDITION INCORPORATING

NEW MATERIAL

PENGUIN

CONTENTS

Map of the Ancient Orie"t

INTRODUCTION

1 The History of the Epic 7 2 Tht Discovery of the Tablt·ts 9 3 The Historical Background 13 4 The Literary Background 17 S The Hero of the Epic 20 6 The Principal Gods £?f the Bpic 23 7 The Story 30

44-8 Survival

9 The Diction the Epic 47

49 10 Remarks on this VerSiOtl

Acknowledgements 59

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH

Prologue: GILGAMESH KING IN URUK 61

3 ISHT AR AND GILGAMESH, AND THE DEATH

6 THE RETURN II4

7 THE DEATH OF GILGAMESH u8

1 THE COMING OF ENKIDU 62

2 THE FOREST JOURNEY 70

OF ENKIDU 85

4 THE SEARCH FOR EVERLASTING LIFE 97

S THE STORY OF THE FLOOD 108

Glossary Names 120

Appendix: Sources 126

Penguin Books Ltd, Hannondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books Inc., 7IIO Ambassador Road, Baltimore, Maryland 2I

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australi.

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 4I Steelcase Road West, Markham, Onta Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, Ne'

This translation first published 1960 Reprinted 1962

Reprinted with revisions 1964

Reprinted I965, 1966, 1967. 1968, I970, 1971 (twice) Reprinted with revisions 1972

Reprinted 1973, 1974, 1975

, i

i I Made and printed in Great Britain

by Cox and Wyman Ltd, London. Reading and Fakenham

Set in Monotype Bembo

I i

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,

be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of

binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition

including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

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INTRODUCTION

1. The History ofthe Epic

THE Epic ofGilgamesh, the renowned king ofUruk in Meso-

potamia, comes from an age which had been wholly forgotten,

until in the last century archaeologists began uncovering the

buried cities of the Middle East. Till then the entire history of

the long period which separated Abraham from Noah was

contained in two of the most forbiddingly genealogical

chapters of the Book ofGenesis. From these chapters only two

names survived in common parlance, those of the hunter

Nimrud and the tower of Babel; but in the cycle of poelllS

which are collected round the character of Gilgamesh we are

carried back into the middle of that age.

These poems have a right to a place in the world's literature,

not only because they antedate Homeric epic by at least one and

a half thousand years, but mainly because of the quality and

character of the story that they tell. It is a mixture of pure

adventure, ofmorality, and oftragedy. Through the action we

are shown a very human concern with mortality, the search for

knowledge, and for an escape from the common lot of man.

The gods, who do not die, cannot be tragic. IfGilgamesh is not

the first human hero, he is the first tragic hero ofwhom any-

thing is known. He is at once the most sympathetic to us, and

most typical ofindividual man in his search for life and under-

standing, and of this search the conclusion must be tragic. It is

perhaps surprising that anything so old as a story of the third

millennium B.C. should still have power to move, and still

attract readers in the twentieth century A.D., and yet it does.

The narrative is incomplete and may remain so; nevertheless

it is today the finest surviving epic poem from any period until

the appearance ofHomer' s Iliad: and it is immeasurably older.

We have good evidence that most of the Gilgamesh poems

INTRODUCTION

were already written down in the first centuries of the secon

millennium B.C., and that they probably existed in much th same form many centuries earlier, while the final recensior

and most complete edition, comes from the seventh centur

library of Assurbanipal, antiquary and last great king of th

Assyrian Empire. This Assurbanipal was a formidable genera

the plunderer of Egypt and Susa; but he was also thecoHector c

a notable library of contemporary historical records, and c

much older hymns, poems, and scientific and religious ten

He tells us that he sent out his servants to search the archives c

the ancient seats oflearning in Babylon, Uruk, and Nippur, an

to copy and translate into the contemporary Akkadian Semiti

those texts which were in the older Sumerian language c

Mesopotamia. Amongst these texts, 'Written downaccordin;

to the original and collated in the palace ofAssurbanipal,

ofthe World, King ofAssyria', was the poem which we call tb Epic ofGilgamesh.

Not long after the completion of this task of collation tb epic was virtually lost and the hero's name forgotten, or dis

guised and garbled out ofrecognition; until it was rediscovero

in the last century. This discovery was due, in the first place

to the curiosity of two Englishmen, and thereafter to tb labours ofscholars in many different parts of the world, witt

have pieced together, copied, and translated the clay tablets 0]

which the poem is written. It is a work which continues, ant

more gaps are being filled ineach year; but the main body ofth Assyrian Epic has not been altered in essentials since the monu

mental publications of text, transliteration, and

by Campbell Thompson in I928 and I930. More recently

however, a new stage has been reached and fresh interes

aroused by the work ofProfessor Samuel Kramer ofPennsyl

vania, whose collection and translation ofSumerian texts hav

carried the history of the Epic back into the third millenniuD B.C. It is now possible to combine and compare a far larger ant

older body ofwritings than ever before.

INTRODUCTION

2. The Discovery of the Tablets

The discovery of the tablets belongs to the heroic age of

excavation in the lllid nineteenth century, \vhen, although

methods were not always so scrupulous nor aitns so strictly

scientific as today, the difficulties and even dangers were

greater, and results had an ilnpact which profoundly altered the

intellectual perspective ofthe age. In 1839 a young Engtishlllan,

Austen Henry Layard, set off with a friend on an overland

journey to Ceylon; but in Mesopotamia he was delayed by a

reconnaissance of Assyrian mounds. The delay of weeks was

lengthened into years, but in time Nineveh and Nimrud were

excavated; and it was frolll these excavations that Layard

brought back to the British Museum a great part of the collec-

tion of Assyrian sculptures, along with thousands of broken

tablets frOlll the palace of Nineveh.

\\lhcn Layard began excavating at Nineveh he hoped to

find inscriptions, but the reality, a buried library and a lost

literature, was more than he could have expected. In fact the

extent and value ofthe discovery was not realized till later when

the clay tablets with wedge-shaped characters were deciphered.

SOllIC, inevitably, were lost; but over twenty-five thousand

broken tablets, a huge number, were brought back to the

British Museum. The work of decipherment \vas begun by

Henry Rawlinson, at the residency in Baghdad, where he w'as

stationed as political agent. Before going to Baghdad, Rawlin-

son, then an army officer in the employ of the East India Cotn-

pany, had discovered what was to prove a principal key to the

decipherment ofcuneiform in the great inscription, the' Record

ofDarius " on the rock ofBe his tun near Kermanshah in Persia,

which is \vritten with cuneiform (wedge-shaped) characters in

the Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian languages. The "'Turk

begun by Rawlinson in Baghdad was continued in the British

.l\/luseum \\:"hen he returned to England in 1855; :1nd soon after

his return he started pubHshing the Cuneiform Inscriptions of

INTRODUCTION

Western Asia. In 1866 he was joined, as an assistant in the work

on the tablets, by George Smith.

Meanwhile Rassam, Layard's collaborator and successor at

Nineveh, had excavated in 1853 that part of the library in

which were the tablets ofthe Assyrian collation ofthe Gilgamesh

Epic. A realization of the importance ofthe discovery did not

come till twenty years later, when in of 1872, at a

meeting of the newly founded Society ofBiblical Archaeology,

George Smith announced that'A short time back I discovered

among the Assyrian tablets in the British Museum an account

ofthe flood.' This was the eleventh tablet ofthe Assyrian recen-

sion of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Soon after this first announce-

ment Smith published the Chaldean Account ofthe Deluge, and with it the outline of the Gilgamesh narrative. Interest was

immediate and widespread; but the Deluge tablet itself was

incomplete, so the search for more tablets was renewed. The

Daily Telegraph contributed 1,000 guineas towards further excavation at Nineveh, which George Smith was to undertake

for the British Museum. Quite soon after his arrival at Nineveh,

Smith found the missing lines from the description ofthe flood,

which was then, as it still is today, the most complete and best

preserved part ofthe whole Epic. Many more tablets were found

in this and the following year, and Smith was able to fill in the

broad outline of the Assyrian version before, in 1876, he suc-

cumbed to sickness and hunger, and died near Aleppo at the age

of thirty-six; but already he had opened up a new field· in

Biblical studies and in ancient history.

When publishing the Assyrian' Deluge' Smith had stated that

this was evidently a copy from a much older version made at

Uruk, the biblical Erech, known today as Warka. Some years

earlier, between 1849 and 1852, W. K. Loftus, a member ofthe

Turko-Persian Frontier Commission, had spent two short

seasons digging at Warka, where he found puzzling renlains,

including what are now known to be third-millennium mosaic

walls, and also tablets. But Warka had to wait for further

INTRODUCTION

attention till the twenties and thirties ofthis century, when the

Germans carried out massive excavations which have revealed

a long series of buildings, as well as sculptures and tablets.

Thanks to this work a great deal is now known about early

Uruk, its temples, and the life of its inhabitants.

Even more important for the history of the Gilgamesh Epic

'were the activities of an American expedition from the Uni-

versity of Pennsylvania, led by John Punnet Peters, which at

the end of the nineteenth century started work on the mound

ofNiffar, ancient Nippur, in Southern Iraq. By this time con-

siderably more experience had been gained of the problems

connected with excavating ancient cities: but there were still

many hazards. The first season at Nippur in 1888-9 began

light-heartedly with the arrival of Peters and his party at the

site in a wild gallop through the canebrakes on rearing stallions;

but their last view of the mound at the end of the season was

of hostile Arabs performing a war-dance on the ruins of the

camp. Nevertheless the work continued the following year, and

a total of from thirty to forty thousand tablets was found

and distributed between museums in Philadelphia and Istanbul.

These tablets include a small group on which are found the

oldest versions of the Gilgamesh cycle in the Sumerian lan-

guage. Work proceeds in the field and among museum

archives. Recent additions have been made by the publication

oftablets from Ur in the British Museum, and tablets have been

identified in Baghdad and elsewhere, some historical, and some

directly connected with the text. Division of the material has complicated the work of decipherment, for in some cases one

halfofan important tablet has been stored in America and the

other in Istanbul, and copies ofboth must be brought together

before the contents are understood.

The majority ofancient texts are commercial and administra-

tive documents, business archives, lists, and inventories

which though profoundly interesting to the historian, are not

for general reading. The recent decipherment of the so-called

INTRODUCTION

'linear B' scriptofBronze Age Mycenae and Crete has revealed

no literature. A huge library discovered at Kiiltepe in Central

Anatolia is entirely made up ofrecords ofbusiness transactions;

and apart from a solitary text, and that a curse, there is not one

of a literary kind. The importance of the excavations at

Nippur, Nineveh, and other great centres ofearly civilization

in Mesopotamia is that they have restored a literature of high

quality and of unique character.

The Gilgamesh Epic must have been widely known in the

second millennium B.C., for a version has been found in the

archives of the Hittite imperial capital at Boghazkoy in

Anatolia, written in Semitic Akkadian; and it was also transla-

ted into the Indo-European Hittite, and the Hurrian languages.

In southern Turkey parts have been found at Sultantepe;

while a small but important fragment from Megiddo in Pales-

tine points to the existence of a Canaanite or later Palestinian

version, and so to the possibility that early Biblical authors were

familiar with the story. The Palestinian fragment comes from

the tablet which describes the death of Enkidu and is closest

to the accoUllt already known from Boghazkoy. Excavation at

Ras Shamra, ancient Ugarit, on the Syrian coast has brought to

life an independent epic literature ofwhich the written versions

mostly date from the later part of the second millennium, and

which was also known in the Hittite capital; it includes a

fragment from a flood narrative that probably stems from ,

version of the Gilgamesh flood. At this period therefore there

was considerable overlapping and some mingling ofthe: variou

literary traditions, including those of the Hittites themselves

and recently a case has been made out for the probable existenCl

of a rather similar Aegean Mycenaean poetic tradition, ele

ments from which would have survived the dark age, anc

reappeared in Homeric and later Greek poetry. The whol

question of the date and nature of this Ulldoubted Asiati

element in Greek myth and early poetry is still debatable an

clouded with tmcertainty.

INTRODUCTION

Whether or not the fanlc ofGilg;ullcsh ofUruk had reached

the Aegean - and the idea is attractive - there can be no doubt

that it was as great as that of any later hero. In tinle his l1aIlle

became so Il1uch a household word that jokes and forgeries were

fathered on to it, as in a popular fraud that survives on eighth-

ceutury B.C. tablets which perhaps theillselves copy an older

text. This is a letter supposed to be written by Gilgamesh to

sonle other king, with coml11ands that he should send improb-

able quantities of livestock and Inetals, along with gold and

precious stones for an amulet for Enkidu, which would \-veigh

no less than thirty pounds. The joke l1lust have been well

received, for it survives in four copies, all from Sultantepe.

The text has been translated and published recently by Dr

Oliver Guoley.

3. The Historical Background

The excavation ofsites and deciphernlent of texts has taught us

a great deal about the historical and the literary background of

the Epic. Although only the last version, that ofAssurbanipal' s

library, has survived as a relatively complete work, it appears

that all the most important elements of the story existed as

separate poems in the older Sumerian literature, and may have

been, indeed probably were, composed and recited long be-

fore they were written down. While no element of the story

can be later than the destruction of Nineveh in the seventh

century, a recurring situation typical ofthe third millennium is

discernible behind much of the action, and probably provided

its context. Behind this again the tradition reaches back into a

prcliterate age on the borderline of legend and history, a little

later than the Deluge, when gods were replaced by mortals on

the thrones of the city-states. This was the age of the Archaic

Sumerian civilization.

The Sumerians were the first literate inhabitants of Meso-

potanlia, and theirs is the language of the oldest tablets from

INTRODUCTION

Nippur which relate to Gilgamesh. They had already irrigated

the country and filled it with their cities, before it was conquered

by Semitic tribes in the course of the third millennium. They

were themselves probably conquerors from the north and

east, who arrived during the fourth millennium. The influ.ence

of this gifted people, shown in laws, language, and ideas, per-

sisted long after they had been conquered by their Semite

neighbours. It has been justly likened to the influence ofRome

on medieval Europe. Their language was still 'written, like

the Latin ofthe Middle Ages, centuries after they had lost their

political identity. It is therefore no anachronism to find the

early Gilgamesh texts still written in this 'learned' language,

although most of them date from the beginning of the second

millennium, after the Semitic conquest.

Excavation has shown that the Archaic Sumerian or Early

Dynastic civilization of the early third millennium follows

notable flood levels at several important sites: Shurrupak, Kish,

and Uruk among them. These levels close the last prehistoric

period, theJemdet Nasr Period ofthe archaeologists; but there

is no proof of their being strictly contemporary. An earlier

disaster, identified by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur, was ofonly

local extent, and archaeological evidence does not support any

single overwhelming catastrophe; nor was a disastrous flood

among the earliest of ancient Sumerian traditions. In later

Sumerian, as in Old Babylonian writings, flood and deluge are

sent by the gods, along with equally catastrophic visitations

ofplague, drought and famine. Five cities are named as existing

before the Deluge, and to them 'Kingship was let down from

Heaven'. After the catastrophe 'Kingship once more des-

cended', and the city-states which then arose were often at war

with one another. The senu-historical 'Sumerian King-List',

composed at the beginning of the second millennium, shows

Kish as the first city to gain pre-eminence; but after a time U ruk

defeated Kish and took away this supremacy. These two states

were traditional rivals. In the King-List Gilgamesh is named as

INTRODUCTION

fifth ruler of the first post-diluvian dynasty of Uruk (see

below).

Because oftheir wealth the cities were great prizes, tempting

to the wild Semitic tribes of Arabia, and to the warlike people

ofElam to the east, and ofthe Persian highlands. Not long after

the fall of the dynasty of Uruk, when the Semites had estab-

lished themselves at Agade in the north, Sargon, their king,

claimed that he had a standing army of5,400 soldiers. Amongst

the chief ofhis exploits was the destruction ofthe walls ofUruk.

These had been a by-word. Men said 'Uruk of the strong

walls', and Gilgamesh was traditionally the great builder.

In the Sumerian Early Dynastic age each city already had its

temples of the gods. They were magnificent buildings decor-

ated with reliefs and mosaics, and usually comprising a great

court and an inner sanctuary, with sometimes, as at Uruk, a

ziggurat behind. This was a holy mountain in miniature: an

antechamber between heaven and earth where the gods could

converse with men. So when Gilgamesh calls on the goddess

Ninsun, his divine mother, she goes up to the roof of the

temple to offer prayer and sacrifice to the great Sun God. The

temples were served by a perpetual priesthood, in whose

hands, at one time, was almost the whole wealth of the state,

and amongst whom were the archivists and teachers, the

scholars and mathematicians. In very early times the whole

temporal power was theirs, as servants ofthe god whose estates

they managed. Later a single individual became' tenant-farmer'

and caretaker, till' Kingship from Heaven', pow'er

_was secularized, and the royal dynasties, competitive and

aggressive in aspect, arose in tum. The prestige of the temples

remained, however, great.

One of the causes of the militarism of the third millennium

was economic. The southern part ofMesopotamia as far as the

Persian Gulf was, and is, a flat hot land of marsh and plain,

very productive when drained, but, apart from the date-palm,

altogether without timber and without metals. The demands

THE STORY OF THE FLOOD

'y0 u know the city Shurrupak, it stands on the banks of

Euphrates? That city grew old and the gods that were in

it were old. There was Anu, lord of the firmament, their

father, and warrior Enlil their counsellor, Ninurta the

helper, and Ennugi watcher over canals; and with them

also was Ea. In those days

multiplied, the .. the

greatgo-cr-was'aroused by the clamour .. the

<?tmankind is is no

the mankind. Enlil did this, bUtEi'because orllls oath wamea \,

""_4______- __."'__ ___ _ .." ____________ ___........... .'-"__ h .....

me in a dream. .. tQ__l!!Y-t.!9us£.of ! reed-house! Wall! 0 hearken

reed-house, of 1

Ubara-Tutu; teii'-dowU' your house and.E!1ild boat, / abanaoli- nossesSiOns-ancr'IOOk-tor w9.ddly i• _______,L,_________________ __._ ,- - ... -"'. ..... goods and save your soul alive. Tear'-down your house, I \

sa'i;-am±--bniktaooaE-thesearE'tne measurements'of the build her: let her beam equal her

length, let her deck be roofed like the vault that covers

the abyss; then take up into the boat the seed of all living

creatures."

'When I had understood I said to my lord, "Behold,

what you have cOllunanded I will honour and perform,

108

THB STORY OP THE FLOOD

but how shall I answer the people, the city, the elders?"

Then Ea opened his mouth and said to me, his servant,

"Tell them this: I have learnt that Enlil is wrathful

against me, I dare no longer walk in his land nor live in

his city; I will go down to the Gulf to dwell with Ea

my lord. But on you he will rain down abundance,

rare fish and shy wild-fowl, a rich harvest-tide. In the

evening the rider of the storm will bring you wheat in

torrents."

'In the first light of dawn all my household gathered

round me, the children brought pitch and the men what-

ever \vas necessary. On the fifth day I laid the keel and the

ribs, then I made fast the planking', The ground-space was

one acre, each side of the deck measured one hundred and

twenty cubits, making a square. I built six decks below,

seven in all, I divided them into nine sections with bulk-

heads between. I drove in wedges where needed, I saw to

the punt-poles, and laid in supplies. The carriers brought

oil in baskets, I poured pitch into the furnace and asphalt

and oil; more oil was consumed in caulking, and more

again the master of the boat took into his stores. I slaugh-

tered bullocks for the people and every day I killed sheep.

I gave the shipwrights wine to drink as though it were

river water, raw wine and red wine and oil and white

wine. There was feasting then as there is at the time of the

New Year's festival; I luyself anointed my head. On the

seventh day the boat was complete.

'Then was the launching full of difficulty; there was

shifting of ballast above and below till two thirds w'as

submerged. I loaded into her all that I had of gold and of

living things, my family, my kin, the beast of the field

both wild and tame, and all the craftsfllen. I sent them on

Iog

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH

board, for the time that Shamash had ordained was already

ful£lled when he said, "In the evening, when the rider of

the storm sends down the destroying rain, enter the boat

and batten her down." The time was fulfilled, the evening

came, the rider of the storm sent down the rain. I looked

out at the weather and it was terrible, so I too boarded

the boat and battened her down. All was now complete,

the battening and the caulking; so I handed the tiller to

Puzur-Amurri the steersman, with the navigation and the

care of the whole boat.

'With the frrst light of dawn a black cloud came from

the horizon; it thundered within where Adad, lord of the

storm was riding. In front over hill and plain Shullat and

Hanish, heralds of the storm, led on. Then the gods ofthe

abyss rose up; Nergal pulled out the dams of the nether

waters, Ninurta the war-lord threw down the dykes, and

the seven judges ofhell, the Annunaki, raised their torches,

lighting the land with their livid flame. A stupor ofdespair

went up to heaven when the god of the storm turned

daylight to darkness, when he smashed the 14nd like a cup.

One whole day the tempest raged, gathering fury as it

went, it poured over the people like the tides of battle; a

man could not see his brother nor the people be seen from

heaven. Even the gods were terrified at the flood, they

fled to the highest heaven, the firmament of Anu; they

crouched against the walls, cowering like curs. Then Ishtar

the sweet-voiced Queen ofHeaven cried out like a woman

in travail: "Alas the days ofold are turned to dust because

I commanded evil; why did I command this evil in the

council ofall the gods? I commanded wars to destroy the

people, but are they not my people, for I brought theln

forth? Now like the spawn offish they float in the ocean."

110

THB STORY OF THB FLOOD

The great gods of heaven and of hell wept, they covered their mouths.

'tor six days al:!9. six nights the windl blew, torrent and ' the, (

warrIng .. \ day fio!!l_tIie sQuth sea \

to .clay siinaceofthe sea as flat as a roof-top;

I opened a hatch and the light fell on my face. Then I bowed

low, I sat down and I wept, the tears streamed down my

face, for on every side was the waste of water. I looked

for land in vain, but fourteen leagues distant there appeared

a mountain, and there the boat grounded; on the mountain

ofNisir the boat held fast, she held fast and did not budge.

One day she held, and a second day on the mountain of

Nisir she held fast and did not budge. A third day, and a

fourth day she held fast on the mountain and did not

budge; a fifth day and a sixth day she held fast on the

mountain. the a qove

and let her go. She flew away, q.t1.t finding,l1<? \

Then I loose4 a swallow, and she flew away \

but .. .

she saw that the waters had retreated; she ate, she flew .- l

! ___.______ -'-

around, she and she did not come back. Then I \

to-'iIleIour -winds, I.-maae a \

out a liEatioliOiitIle J!!.ountain top. I

Seven:-and again seven I stands, I

wood and and.my£t1e. When

.flies

Then, at last, Ishtar also came, she lifted

her necklace with the jewels ofheaven that once Anu had

III

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH

made to please her. "0 you gods here present, by the

lapis lazuli rotll1d my neck I shall remember these days as

I remember the jewels ofmy throat; these last days I shall

not forget. Let all the gods gather round the sacrifice,

except Enlil. He shall not approach this offering, for

without reflection he brought the flood; he consigned my

people to destruction."

'When EnHl had COOle, when he saw the boat, he was

wrath and swelled with anger at the gods, the host of

heaven, "Has any of these mortals escaped? Not one 'was

to have survived the destruction." Then the god of the

wells and canals Ninurta opened his mouth and said to the

warrior Enlil, "Who is there of the gods that can devise

without Ea? It is Ea alone who knows all things." Then

Ea opened his tnouth and spoke to warrior Enlil, "Wisest

of gods, hero Enlil, how could you so senselessly bring

down the flood?

Lay upon the sinner his sin,

Lay upon the transgressor his transgression,

Punish him a little when he breaks loose,

Do not drive him too hard or he perishes;

Would that a lion had ravaged mankind

Rather than the jlood,

that a wolf had ravaged mankind

Rather than the jlood,

TVordd that famine had wasted the world

Rather than the flood,

vVould that pestilence had wasted mankind

Rather than the flood. -

It was not I that revealed the secret of the gods; the 'wise

II2

THE STORY OF THE FLOOD

man learned it in a dream. Now take your cOWlsel what shall be done with him."

'Then Enlil went up into the boat, he took me by the

hand and my wife and made us enter the boat and kneel

down on either side, he standing between us. He touched

our foreheads to bless us saying, "In time past Utnapishtim

was a mortal man; henceforth he and his wife shall live

in the distance at the mouth ofthe rivers." Thus it was that

the gods took me and placed me here to live in the distance,

at the mouth of the rivers.'

113