Tablet X — The Waters of Death

The tale resumes where the colophon of Tablet IX left off: the divine maiden Siduri, whose name means “she who is my refuge,” sits on the throne of the sea—a poet’s way of saying she dwells in a palace at the ocean’s edge. Gilgamesh, clothed in the raw skin of a beast, stumbles toward her from the wilderness. Another wall rises before him, and again he gives voice to his grief, furious at the unending roads that still stretch ahead.

Siduri looks up and sees him from a long way off—a wild shape against the dunes. She speaks to herself, taking counsel in her heart: “Because this . . . How can a man in such a state hope to succeed?” And as he draws near, she retreats into her ocean-palace. Its gate she bolts, and bolts again, shutting fast the door. But Gilgamesh hears the scrape of the bar. He lifts his hand—the tablet is broken here—and calls out to her: “Siduri, why do you stare at me? Why do you lock your gate? I will break it down if you do not open it!”

The lower portion of the clay is destroyed, but we know what must have happened: Siduri described to him the impossibility of the road ahead—a sea no one can cross, a passage that leads only into darkness.

Then Gilgamesh spoke again, for his sorrow would not be silenced. He told her why he had come, and he wept for Enkidu, his friend now crumbled back to dust. The thought of sharing that dust was a weight he could not bear. And he said to her, to Siduri: “Tell me, O Siduri, which way leads to Utnapishtim? What is its direction? Show me. If it can be crossed, I will cross the sea. If it cannot, I will run there across the open land.”

Siduri answered him: “Gilgamesh, there has never been a crossing here. No one since the days before days has ever crossed this sea. Shamash the hero crosses it—but who besides Shamash can do such a thing? Hard is the crossing, and deadly the way; sealed are the Waters of Death that bolt its entrance. How, then, will you cross? And if you reach those waters, what will you do? But listen: there is Urshanabi, the boatman of Utnapishtim. He stands beside the Stone Ones; in the cedar forest he fells timber. May your eyes find him. If it is possible, cross with him; if not, then turn back.”

When Gilgamesh heard this, he seized the axe from his shoulder and drew the sword from his belt. He charged into the grove and fell upon the Stone Ones like a javelin, shattering them. Then he stood at the mouth of the Waters of Death, the grim sea that wraps the world, beyond which the Isle of the Blessed lies hidden.

There Gilgamesh found Urshanabi and poured out his grief, using the same words he had spoken before, ending with a desperate plea: “Ferry me across!” Urshanabi looked at the shattered stones and answered him: “Your hand, Gilgamesh, has blocked the crossing. You have smashed the Stone Ones, and the thing that was is no more. Now take the axe at your side, go into the forest, and cut one hundred and twenty punting poles, each five gar long. Make them ready, and we will see what can be done.”

Gilgamesh did as he was told. He took the axe, drew the sword, felled the wood, shaped one hundred and twenty poles, smeared them with pitch, and carried them to Urshanabi. Then the two embarked. The small craft tossed on the swell as they pushed out. A journey of forty-five days they closed in three, and so Urshanabi brought them to the Waters of Death.

Now the hardest trial began. The ferryman urged Gilgamesh not to give in—not while the black water lay beneath them. They labored day after day, and Gilgamesh worked the pole until his strength ebbed. When he could no longer stand, he loosened his belt and rested, worn thin.

Far off, Utnapishtim looked down and saw the boat. He studied it and spoke to himself in wonder: “Why are the Stone Ones of the ship smashed? And the one who rides in it—he does not bear my mark. Is he a man? He has not the right side of a man. I look: is that not a human being? I look: is that not a man? I look: is that not a god? He resembles me in everything.”

At the start of Column V, Gilgamesh drew near the shore. Still sitting in the boat, he poured out his tale before his ancestor. He spoke of the panther of the field they had fought, of the Heaven-Bull they had slain, of Humbaba the tyrant whose roar filled the cedar forest, and of other beasts and trials. He told of his friend’s sickness, of that slow and terrible death, and then his voice broke: “Now I weep for him. I have wandered through every land, climbed sheer mountains, crossed dreadful seas—all of it for nothing. The friend I loved has turned to clay. Enkidu, my friend. I will not lie down like him. I will not sink where he has gone.”

And Gilgamesh said to Utnapishtim: “I have come here to see the one they call the Distant. I have turned toward him for help. I have traveled all lands, crossed steep mountains, and traversed every sea.”

Column VI must have held Utnapishtim’s long answer, in which he told the hero that even he could not unlock the door of death. Death comes to all; no one escapes. As long as houses are built, as long as tablets are sealed, as long as brothers quarrel, as long as hatred and strife stalk the earth, as long as the river carries water to the sea—so long is no likeness of death drawn. No man knows his hour. When the Alu-demon and the Eziz-demon greet a man, then the Anunnaki, the great gods, assemble, and the goddess of fate, she who determines destiny with them, decides. They determine death and life. But the day of death is hidden from mankind.

Here ends the tenth tablet of the great epic.