Note 11 — Introduction.

We now have further evidence both of the extreme antiquity of the literary form of the Gilgamesh Epic and also of the disposition to make the Epic the medium of illustrating aspects of life and the destiny of mankind. The discovery by Dr. Arno Poebel of a Sumerian form of the tale of the descent of Ishtar to the lower world and her release11—apparently a nature myth to illustrate the change of season from summer to winter and back again to spring—enables us to pass beyond the Akkadian (or Semitic) form of tales current in the Euphrates Valley to the Sumerian form. Furthermore, we are indebted to Dr. Langdon for the identification of two Sumerian fragments in the Nippur Collection which deal with the adventures of Gilgamesh, one in Constantinople,12 the other in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum.13 The former, of which only 25 lines are preserved (19 on the obverse and 6 on the reverse), appears to be a description of the weapons of Gilgamesh with which he arms himself for an encounter—presumably the encounter with Ḫumbaba or Ḫuwawa, the ruler of the cedar forest in the mountain.14 The latter deals with the building operations of Gilgamesh in the city of Erech. A text in Zimmern’s Sumerische Kultlieder aus altbabylonischer Zeit (Leipzig, 1913), No. 196, appears likewise to be a fragment of the Sumerian version of the Gilgamesh Epic, bearing on the episode of Gilgamesh’s and Enkidu’s relations to the goddess Ishtar, covered in the sixth and seventh tablets of the Assyrian version.15