Page:An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic - Morris - 1920.djvu/41

 E-ta-na, which are distinctly foreign, while such names as En-me(n)-nun-na and Bar-sal-nun-na strike one again as “Sumerianized” names rather than as genuine Sumerian formations. Some of these names, as Galumum, Arpi and Etana, are so Amoritic in appearance, that one may hazard the conjecture of their western origin. May Gilgamesh likewise belong to the Amurru region, or does he represent a foreigner from the East in contrast to Enkidu, whose name, we have seen, may have been Baal-Ṭôb in the West, with which region he is according to the Epic so familiar? It must be confessed that the second element ga-mesh would fit in well with a Semitic origin for the name, for the element impresses one as the participial form of a Semitic stem g-m-š, just as in the second element of Meskin-gašer we have such a form. Gil might then be the name of a West-Semitic deity. Such conjectures, however, can for the present not be substantiated, and we must content ourselves with the conclusion that Gilgamesh as the real name of the hero, or at least the form which comes closest to the real name, points to a foreign origin for the hero, and that such forms as dGish-bil-ga-mesh and dGish-bíl-gi-mesh and other variants are “Sumerianized” forms for which an artificial etymology was brought forward to convey the