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© 1995-2001 Untangle Incorporated
Last Updated: Sunday February 17, 2002
Tablet VI
The Hero Returns - The Bull of Heaven
Column I
Gilgamesh returned to the holy ground of Uruk, divine Eanna's city.
Gilgamesh returned covered in Hawawa's gore.
Gilgamesh washed the blood from his hair.
Gilgamesh was the gore from his body.
Gilgamesh was clothed in the finest robes, the finest sash, the finest shoes, the finest cloak.
Gilgamesh was returned his weopens, cleaned and polished.
Gilgamesh placed his torcs upon his arms.
Gilgamesh placed his crown on his head.
Gilgamesh placed his ruling mace in his right hand.
Gilgamesh did sit on his throne.
Divine Eanna saw him and was overwhelmed with lust.
"Be my lover. Love me as a husband does a wife.
Give me your seed, give me your semen.
Plant your seed in my womb.
Abundance will follow, produce without name.
Your riches will pile up higher than the sky.
A chriot of lapis lauzli, brass, ivory and golden wheels shall you have.
On it pulled by horses created from thunderheads shall you arrived
At our home, with cedar post, with cedar floor, with cedar wall in every room.
Each power in the land will bow down before you
And offer their new born triplets to you alone.
Have sex with me and all this shall become yours."
Gilgamesh to these words did reply:
"What may I offer in return, Queen of Love? You have everything.
You want for all I state merely my cock?
Why not I give you the food and drinks of the gods?
I have nothing for she who has all.
What happens when your desire burns out?
What happens when you leave?
Shall I love the cold air left?
Shall I have after only your memory, a tar that won't wash away?
Where are your lovers past and your husbands too?
Dumuzi the shepherd, slain for your gain, forced to live underground
While you play above.
And then their was that courtier who fluttered into your snare.
Do you hear his cries ever since?
"My wing is broken; broken is my wing".
A mighty lion did you fuck, and when his seed was in your sack
You led him to a hunter's pit seven times seven deep, and left him to rot.
You broke a wild horse and in his mouth placed harsh bit
By let him take you hindermost,
And then hobbled him
So he can drink the water of a stream his hoofs muddied all the while.
You took each sacrificed kid,ate the profferedcakes and drank from a goatherder sweet
and in return into wolf did you him turn, which dogs did follow and bite.
With no further thought of that ex-lover you quickly turned to
Your father's gardener Ishullanu whom you did tease when sweet figs and dates for you.
"Ishullanu, come touch me here between my legs,
Put your fingers deep within my sacred sack,
I have no clothes on to halt your way."
And to you did Ishullanu say,
Why, Eanna, should I eat your rotten meal,
When a tasty healthy meal could be mine?"
Why should I sin
And be accursed to lie
Cold, hungry and afright in wild marsh land?"
Now some say that you, Eanna so kind, turned into a frog who does croak:
"I know not, I know not at all".
And some say that you turned his penis into a mole
Stuck in a tunnel in the ground which
He can pull not out nor push further in.
So Eanna, so sweet and kind,
Which of these fates do you wish me find?
Column II
With these words from Gilgamesh in her ears
Eanna did roar and shout, and
Straight to heaven did she fly.
Straight to her father Anu, and her mother Anunna too.
"The king of Uruk has insulted me.
He mocks my loves, and told of them to everyone."
Anu looks down on his daughter and does ask:
"Why do you rage? Did you not lust for Gilgamesh
To Thrust his semen into your sack?
Did you not him approach like a man?
Why complain what you did start?
He tells only to all what you did do.
The truth is no crime."
Eanna did roar and then she did demand:
"Give me the Bull of Heaven so I may punish his flaying tongue.
Give me the Bull of Heaven so I may trample him dead.
Give me them or I shall break the gates to the land of the dead,
And let them wander out to feast on living flesh,
So many dead they will be more than any living ones for sure."
Anu say to his daughter Eanna thus:
"The Bull of Heaven will trample the grain to the ground for seven years.
Unless you gather each harvest now your people will in famine lie.
Surely you want not your worshippers to eat only husks.
Surely you want the sweet smoke of good offerings sent to you.
Have you thought on this?"
"Yes I have thought on this
And each harvest have I stored for seven years,
So each beast and person too will eat and drink well,
Of this I be sure."
Column III
So to his daughter did Anu give
the Bull of Heaven.
And soon he was heard
Snorting and bellowing like a mighty herd.
He stomped his hoofs.
The Euphrates shook.
He stomped his hoofs.
Uruk shook.
He stomped his hoofs.
The whole earth shook.
He stomped his hoofs.
The earth did break and into the cracks,
100 Uruk men fell through.
On this third stomp did Enkidu rush forth
And before the Bull of Heaven stood.
Grasping in his wildness shaped hands the horns
He twisted the head of the Bull
So stinking slobber did splash on Enkidu's face.
Enkidu twisted the Bull the other way
The bull's stinking tail did brush Enkidu's face.
To Gilgamesh did Enkidu cry:
"Life is short.
Let us fight the Bull of Heaven
And win."
Gilgamesh rushed in to fight.
"Friends together can win out"
So while Enkidu held taut stinking tail
Gilgamesh shoved his sword like a butcher's knife
between shoulder and horn and so killed the Bull.
From the Bull the two friends tore
his heart as offering to great Shamash.
Bowing first to Shamash,
The two friends sat down and rested.
Column IV
From heaven down did Eanna come with roar and shout.
On high tower of Uruk did she stand and curse all below.
Woe be to all because of Gilgamesh.
For insult to Eanna by his telling all her myriad ways.
For insult to Eanna by killing her punisher the Bull of Heaven. "
Angry did these word make Enkidu.
So he flung a haunch of slaughtered Bull
at the wall of the tower on which the goddess stood.
"If I could reach you now
I would tear your leg from your body
As I have this leg from the Bull.
I would."
Eanna swooped down and the haunch she took
To her temple and
Did wail and lament over this haunch.
Gilgamesh then did show to all the artisans
To show how the Bull of Heaven had been made.
He showed the the coating on the horns two fingers thick.
He cut the horns off and filled them will six measures of oil.
He offered the oil in memory to his father Lugalbanda.
He hung the empty horns in his room at home.
Then to the Euphrates Gilgamesh in hand with Enkidu did they go.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu, friends, washed their hands in calm river waters.
Behind them gathered Uruk's folk
Blessed them and cheered them back through Uruk's streets.
Then Gilgamesh spoke to the crowds.
"I am the strongest one of all.
Fame will attend my sons for ever more.
Eanna is mocked by Uruk and
Gilgamesh is proclaimed for the glory he has obtained."
All night did the palace sing and dance
The victory this day and in cedar forest far.
But later in his sleep did Enkidu dream
That the gods did meet and
And he when awoke he did feel the end seemed near.
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