The last and longest member of the Decad was the scribal students’ first literary encounter with the legendary hero Gilgames (see Gilgames, Enkidu, and the Underworld, Group A). It is an extraordinarily well-crafted composition in three scenes, each 6o lines long (though with many variant additional lines; see the notes) and a 20-line epilogue.
In a foreshadowing of the explicit concern with mortality in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgames, the hero states at the outset that he is looking for a great adventure to make him famous, ‘since a man cannot pass beyond the final end of life’ (line 4). His desire is to go to the cedar forests (of the Lebanon), in reality a journey of about two months up the Euphrates and across the Syrian desert. GilgameS and Enkidu pray to Utu for permission and assistance in their journey and recruit a cohort of single young men to come with them.
Once in the forest they start to fell trees, but GilgameS and his followers are suddenly overcome by sleep; only Enkidu manages to resist. When Enkidu finally rouses him, Gilgames is furious, desperate to know who has done this to him. Enkidu counsels caution but GilgameS is spoiling for a fight.
But when they find Huwawa, the monstrous guardian of the cedar forest, his powerful divine auras mean that they cannot get anywhere near him. GilgameS tricks the lonely and gullible Huwawa out of them one by one by promising to be his friend and offering all sorts of implausible gifts. (Most of these are preserved only in sources from places other than Nibru, and are given in the notes to the composition.) Then, unfair to the last, he sneaks up behind Huwawa and punches him in the face. Huwawa, hurt more emotionally than physically, pleads with GilgameS and Enkidu in turn to take pity and let him go. But when a war of words develops between Enkidu and Huwawa, Enkidu’s patience snaps and he chops off the monster’s head. Ironically, then, it is not the hero GilgameS who kills Huwawa in the end, but his sensible servant who has all along been advising restraint.
When they take Huwawa’s head as an offering to Enlil, he is furious with them for abusing Huwawa’s trust, and hands out the dead monster’s auras to various terrifying and dangerous places.
344 the decad, a scribal curriculum
World History
