Page:An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic - Morris - 1920.djvu/109

 Babylonia and Assyria, Pl. LVII), though it has been given a somewhat grotesque character by a perhaps intentional approach to the scimitar, associated with Marduk (see Ward, Seal Cylinders, Chap. XXVII). The exact determination of the various weapons depicted on seal-cylinders merits a special study.

Line 181. Begins a speech of Ḫuwawa, extending to line 187, reported to Gish by the elders (line 188–189), who add a further warning to the youthful and impetuous hero.

Line 183. lu-uk-šú-su (also l. 186), from akâšu, “drive on” or “lure on,” occurs on the Pennsylvania tablet, line 135, uk-ki-ši, “lure on” or “entrap,” which Langdon erroneously renders “take away” and thereby misses the point completely. See the comment to the line of the Pennsylvania tablet in question.

Line 192. On the phrase šanû bunu, “change of countenance,” in the sense of “enraged,” see the note to the Pennsylvania tablet, l.31.

Line 194. nu-ma-at occurs in a tablet published by Meissner, ''Altbabyl. Privatrecht, No. 100, with bît abi'', which shows that the total confine of a property is meant; here, therefore, the “interior” of the forest or heart. It is hardly a “by-form” of nuptum as Muss-Arnolt, Assyrian Dictionary, p. 690b, and others have supposed, though nu-um-tum in one passage quoted by Muss-Arnolt, ib. p. 705a, may have arisen from an aspirate pronunciation of the p in nubtum.

Line 215. The kneeling attitude of prayer is an interesting touch. It symbolizes submission, as is shown by the description of Gilgamesh’s defeat in the encounter with Enkidu (Pennsylvania tablet, l. 227), where Gilgamesh is represented as forced to “kneel” to the ground. Again in the Assyrian version, Tablet V, 4, 6, Gilgamesh kneels down (though the reading ka-mis is not certain) and has a vision.

Line 229. It is much to be regretted that this line is so badly preserved, for it would have enabled us definitely to restore the opening line of the Assyrian version of the Gilgamesh Epic. The fragment published by Jeremias in his appendix to his Izdubar-Nimrod, Plate IV, gives us the end of the colophon line to the Epic, reading ......... di ma-a-ti (cf. ib., Pl. I, 1. ... a-ti). Our text evidently reproduces the same phrase and enables us to supply ka, as well as