The Epic of Gilgamesh: Lines 442–663

I could give you bread and other foods: there must be enough sustenance
Fit for divinity—I, too, must give you a drink fit for royalty.

You are but a pitfall with a covering that gives way treacherously,
You are but pitch that defiles the man who carries it,
You are but a bottle that leaks on him who carries it,
You are but limestone that lets stone ramparts fall crumbling in ruin.

You also loved a gardener of your father,
Who continually brought you delicacies,
And daily adorned your table for you.

Yes, and iniquity! Furthermore, when are thin reeds a cloak against winter?

“My father, Gilgamesh has insulted me;
Gilgamesh has upbraided me with my evil deeds,
My deeds of evil and of violence.”

Anu answered Ishtar, the Lady:
“If I create the Heavenly Bull, for which you ask me,
Then seven years of famine will follow after his attack.
Have you gathered corn enough, and enough fodder for the cattle?”

Enkidu girded his middle; and straightway Enkidu, leaping,
Seized the Heavenly Bull by his horns, and headlong before him
Cast down the Heavenly Bull his full length.

“O hetaera, I will decree a terrible fate for you—your woes shall never end for all eternity. Come, I will curse thee with a bitter curse: may there never be satisfaction of your desires—and may disaster befall your house, may the gutters of the street be your dwelling, may the shade of the wall be your abode—may scorching heat and thirst destroy your strength.”

“O hetaera, I will decree a terrible fate for you—your woes shall never end for all eternity. Come, I will curse thee with a bitter curse: may there never be satisfaction of your desires—and may disaster befall your house, may the gutters of the street be your dwelling, may the shade of the wall be your abode—may scorching heat and thirst destroy your strength.”

Over the right side of the Heavenly Bull she wept and lamented.

Enkidu listened to the words of the valiant Shamash,
And when the Sun god finished speaking, Enkidu’s wrath was appeased.

Listen to me, O Elders; I weep for my comrade Enkidu,
Bitterly crying like a wailing woman: my grip is slackened on my ax,
For I have been assailed by sorrow and cast down in affliction.

In front of his comrade
He paced backwards and forwards, tearing his hair and casting away his finery,
Plucking and casting away all the grace of his person.

Gilgamesh wept bitterly for his comrade, for Enkidu, ranging
Over the desert: “I, too—shall I not die like Enkidu also?
Sorrow hath entered my heart; I fear death as I range over the desert,
So I will take the road to the presence of Utnapishtim, the offspring of Ubara-Tutu;
And with speed will I travel.”

As he reached the Mountains of Mashu,
Where every day they keep watch over the Sun god’s rising and setting,
The peaks rise up to the Zenith of Heaven, and downwards
Deep into the Underworld reach their roots: and there at their portals stand sentry
Scorpion-men, awful in terror, their very glance Death: and tremendous,
Shaking the hills, their magnificence; they are the Wardens of Shamash,
Both at his rising and setting.