Tablets VII & VIII — The Death of Enkidu

Tablets VII and VIII

Only a handful of fragments survive; from them, only the faintest outline can be drawn. Tablet VII must have opened with Enkidu recounting the dream that visited him on the morning after the victory celebration in Uruk, and it closed with his death — the death the goddess Ishtar brought upon him. Pages 53 and 54 (see also 55) of Professor Haupt's edition are assigned by Dr. Jeremias to Tablet VIII, since the column preceding them (Column VI), inscribed on the obverse of the same tablet, speaks of Enkidu's sickness and death (see Tablet IX).

In Column I, Enkidu urges his friend toward some heroic deed worthy of his renown. They have halted before a gate in the forest, and Enkidu addresses it thus:

There is no other tree like thee. Six gar in height — one gar equaling twelve or fourteen cubits — and two gar in thickness.

Enkidu also says of it: "I know thee."

And in Column VI he moans:

I went forth in good health, my friend . . . But the dream I dreamed has been fulfilled.

There Enkidu lay for twelve days — on the first day, and on the second, when Enkidu upon his couch [lay sick]; on the third and the fourth [...] on the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth day, and all the days following, when Enkidu [lay sick upon his couch]; the eleventh day, the twelfth day [...] when Enkidu lay upon his couch [...]

Then he called out to Gilgamesh.

The few traces remaining in the lines that follow reveal that the hero received his wound in a fight which, in fearful premonition, "he had feared." The lament for the dead in Tablet XII tells us it must have been a fight both dire and extraordinary. Of his end — narrated, it would seem, upon Tablet IX — it is said again and again in Tablet XII: "Earth has snatched him away."