Page:An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic - Morris - 1920.djvu/50

 certain religious teachings regarding man’s place in nature and his higher destiny. From the resemblance between Enkidu and Adam it does not, of course, follow that the latter is modelled upon the former, but only that both rest on similar traditions of the condition under which men lived in primeval days prior to the beginnings of human culture.

We may now pass beyond these general indications and recognize in the story of Enkidu as revealed by the Pennsylvania tablet an attempt to trace the evolution of primitive man from low beginnings to the regular and orderly family life associated with advanced culture. The new tablet furnishes a further illustration for the surprisingly early tendency among the Babylonian literati to connect with popular tales teachings of a religious or ethical character. Just as the episode between Gilgamesh and the maiden Sabitum is made the occasion for introducing reflections on the inevitable fate of man to encounter death, so the meeting of Enkidu with the woman becomes the medium of impressing the lesson of human progress through the substitution of bread and wine for milk and water, through the institution of the family, and through work and the laying up of resources. This is the significance of the address to Enkidu in column 4 of the Pennsylvania tablet, even though certain expressions in it are somewhat obscure. The connection of the entire episode of Enkidu and the woman with Gilgamesh is very artificial; and it becomes much more intelligible if we disassociate it from its present entanglement in the Epic. In Gilgamesh’s dream, portending the meeting with Enkidu, nothing is said of the woman who is the companion of the latter. The passage in which Enkidu is created by Aruru to oppose Gilgamesh betrays evidence of having been worked over in order to bring Enkidu into association with the longing of the people of Erech to get rid of a tyrannical character. The people in their distress appeal to Aruru to create a rival to Gilgamesh. In response, Aruru upon hearing this created a man of Anu in her heart.” Now this “man of Anu” cannot possibly be Enkidu, for the sufficient reason that a few lines further on Enkidu is described as an