An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic

Excerpt: ...just as in the Babylonian tale the woman who guides Enkidu is h arimtu, "woman." 109 "And he drank and became drunk" (Genesis 9, 21). 110 "His heart became glad and his face shone" (Pennsylvania Tablet, lines 100-101). 111 That in the combination of this Enkidu with tales of primitive man, inconsistent features should have been introduced, such as the union of Enkidu with the woman as the beginning of a higher life, whereas the presence of a hunter and his father shows that human society was already in existence, is characteristic of folk-tales, which are indifferent to details that may be contradictory to the general setting of the story. 112 Pennsylvania tablet, lines 102-104. 113 Line 105. 114 Tablet I, 1, 9. See also the reference to the wall of Erech as an "old construction" of Gilgamesh, in the inscription of An-Am in the days of Sin-gamil (Hilprecht, Old Babylonian Inscriptions, I, No. 26. ) Cf IV R