In the reconstructed tale, the father tells his son to go to Gilgamesh to relate to him the strange appearance of the animal-man; but there is clearly no purpose in this, as is shown by the fact that when the hunter does so, Gilgamesh makes precisely the same speech as does the father of the hunter. Lines 40–44 of column 3, in which Gilgamesh is represented as speaking to the hunter form a complete doublet to lines 19–24, beginning
"Go, my hunter, take with thee a woman, etc.”
and similarly the description of Enkidu appears twice, lines 2–12 in an address of the hunter to his father, and lines 29–39 in the address of the hunter to Gilgamesh.
The artificiality of the process of introducing Gilgamesh into the episode is revealed by this awkward and entirely meaningless repetition. We may therefore reconstruct the first two scenes in the Enkidu Epic as follows:[1]
Line 25, beginning “On the advice of his father,” must have set forth, in the original form of the episode, how the hunter procured the woman and took her with him to meet Enkidu. Column 4 gives in detail the meeting between the two, and naïvely describes how the woman exposes her charms to Enkidu, who is captivated by her and stays with her six days and seven nights. The animals see the change in Enkidu and run away from him.
- ↑ Following as usual the enumeration of lines in Jensen’s edition.