Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/272

260. He and Eabani together slay this bull, however, and the goddess, now terribly incensed, pronounces a terrible curse upon Gizdubar. The seventh tablet is unfortunately missing. The eighth, ninth, and tenth narrate how Gizdubar, suffering under the divine anger, loses his friend Eabani and is smitten with a grievous illness. He journeys to the river's mouth to consult his divine ancestor Sitnapistim. On his way he crosses a desert where "scorpion men" guard the dark path to the "waters of the dead," which separate him from his quest. On the shore of this sea he finds a park of the gods, with wonderful trees bearing precious stones for fruit. After waiting here a long time a ferryman takes him over to the fields of the blessed, where he meets Sitnapistim. He tells his sorrowful tale, and the heart of Sitnapistim is filled with pity; but, alas! neither gods nor men can give him help. In the eleventh tablet Gizdubar inquires of Sitnapistim how he became immortal, and receives in answer the story of the deluge. After its recital Sitnapistim heals Gizdubar of his disease, and gives him the plant of life, its name being "Altho'-a-graybeardthe-man-becomes-young-again." Unfortunately, an evil demon robs him of this on the way home. In the twelfth and last tablet Gizdubar returns to Erech and utters a lament over his lost friend Eabani, whose ghost subsequently appears and recounts the doings of the dead in Hades.

Thus the deluge story is a myth within a myth, containing statements plainly unveracious; and how we are to distinguish in this mass of fiction the true from the false passes the wit of man to conceive. If we say of the deluge part of it that it is a gross exaggeration, the judgment will sound mild, but this is all that is requisite to reduce the catastrophe to commonplace proportions.

Whether Gizdubar ever existed in the flesh or not has been doubted; it is certainly remarkable that each of the chapters of the poem corresponds to one of the signs of the zodiac, and they are arranged in the same order as the signs of the zodiac. A fanciful correspondence is thus drawn between the succession of events in the life of Gizdubar and the yearly course of the sun through the heavens, and it has consequently been maintained that Gizdubar is no other than the sun himself personified. The stages in the life of man find, however, so ready an analogy in the course of the sun, that this conclusion is by no means forced upon us, and we may turn to another identification of more significance in our inquiry. It is that of the Greek story of Heracles with the legend of Gizdubar. Heracles himself is no other than a Greek Gizdubar, the Chaldean Eabani corresponds to the centaur Cheiron, the tyrant Humbaba to the tyrant Geryon, the divine bull to the bull of Crete, the park of the gods to the garden