Tablet V — The Battle with Humbaba

Tablet V — The Battle with Humbaba

Column I. The two heroes have breached the sacred forest and now stand before the stronghold of Humbaba. They have forced the gate. Looming around them, the great wood rises, and they stare, astonished, at the crowns of the cedars and at the mouth of the cedar grove where Humbaba himself walked with towering strides. The ways are laid with care, the paths kept clear. They behold the cedar hill, dwelling of gods, sanctuary of Ernini. Before the mountain, a single cedar blazes with splendour; its shade is deep and sweet, and the sight of it fills the heart with gladness — or so the broken line suggests. Here the column shatters; what followed was likely a longer vision of the palace and the world around it. A fragment on page 27 preserves a speech of Gilgamesh to Enkidu in which he speaks again of the corpse left for the vultures. In Columns II and III (pages 25 and 28, and perhaps 74 and 86) the two rehearse their earlier triumphs, a good omen for the fight now closing upon them. Of the remaining columns, nothing survives except a handful of lines at the end of Column V (page 26), where the very last words name the head of Humbaba. Those two words confirm that the preceding verses told how the monster was fought and slain. Then, as Babylonian scribes always did, two lines follow: the first gives the opening line of Tablet VI, and the second declares this to be the fifth tablet of the great series, using the first line of Tablet I as the catchword that binds the whole epic together — a lamp for the reader moving through the twelve.