This tablet of the series is known from just two manuscripts, MS H from Kuyunjik (two joining fragments) and MS dd from Uruk. As noted immediately above, they start at different places, and it seems that Assyrian and Babylonian scribes differed as to the point of division betweenTablets IV and V. In the present edition I have adopted the Assyrian practice. Accordingly, the reverse sides of two Babylonian copies of Tablet IV, MSS v and w, also provide text for TabletV. Of these four sources Thompson knew only MS H, but he considered MS Y (Tablet IV) to belong here.®® MS dd was found in the twenty-ninth season of the excavations atWarka (1970-1) and comes from the same general find as MSS bb and ee (Tablet n),cc (Tablet I) andee (Tablet HI).“It was publishedbyE. von Wether in 1980.The day tablet is now in a more complete state than vonWeiher’s photographs indicate, for in the course of studying the piece in 19891 came across some tiny detached fragments which it was possible to re-attach. The mostimportant of these is a small flake that allows the restoration of the passage in which Gilgames and Enkidu despatch Humbaba.
MS H is a large fragment from the top edge at the left-hand comer, with par ts of columns i, ii, V and vi extant. It has a catch-line and rubric stating its place in the series, but no colophon of the kind customary in Assurbanipal’s libraries. Like MS AA, which it resembles closely in clay and script, MS H was probably inherited or acquired from an older
Now ihat MS bb has demonstrated that different traditions existed regarding the division between Tableis IV and Vjitis no longer necessary to attribute, as Landsberger did (RA 62, p. 108), the duplication of MSS H//u to a repetition in TabletV (MS H) of a speech already given inTablet IV (MS u).
“ The fragment K 6497 (MacMillan, BAVI5 no. 44) was suggested as Gilgames V in CAD S, p. 43, but it is quite unlike otiier pieces of the epic from Kuyunjik and finds no place in the current edition.
Findspot: Square Ue XVIII1, Level H, dwelling-house, upper floor (vonWeiher, LT® 29-30, p. 96, no. 9). Baked since excavation.
Collection. MS dd is the upper half of a six-column tablet of which the obverse is rounded and the reverse flat.’'" Parts of all columns are preserved. Unfortunately not enough of the colophon has survived to yield the name of the tablet’s owner. The Une numeration of Tablet'V is based upon the estimated column lengths of both sources. On the obverse of MS dd a column length was about forty-five lines, but significantly less on the reverse, for there the scribe makes lavish use of space.'Where MS H duplicates MS dd, in columns v and vi, one may estimate a column length on the Assyrian manuscript of about fifty-two lines.'*
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