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 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

LATUM SHIL GILGAMESH
EPIC OF GILGAMESH

Tablet 2:397
Tablet 2:445

397 Let her door be bolted against grief with pitch and bitumen!
398 Because of me, games are spoiled,
399 My own misfortunes have reduced me to misery.
400 Utnafishtim spoke to him, to Gilgamesh,
401 Why do you prolong grief, Gilgamesh?
402 Since the Anunnagi made you like your father and mother,
403 Death is inevitable at some time, both for Gilgamesh and for a fool,
404 But a throne is set down for you in the assembly.
405 To a fool is given dregs instead of butter, rubbish and sweepings clothed in a loincloth because he hast no sense hast no word of advice.
406 Gilgamesh raised his head,
407 Why have you exerted yourself? What have you achieved?
408 You have made yourself weary for lack of sleep,
409 You only fill your flesh with grief,
410 You only bring the distant days of reckoning closer.
411 Mankind's fame is cut down like reeds in a reed-bed.
412 A fine young man, a fine girl,
413 Nobody sees death,
414 Nobody sees the face of death,
415 Nobody hears the voice of death.
416 Savage death just cuts mankind down.
417 Sometimes we build a house, sometimes we make a nest,
418 But then brothers divide it upon inheritance.
419 Sometimes there is hostility in the land,
420 But then the river rises and brings flood-water.
421 Dragonflies drift on the river,
422 Their faces look upon the face of the sun,
423 But then suddenly there is nothing.
424 The primitive man is as any young man.
425 When they blessed me,
426 The Anunnagi, the great Anunnagi, assembled;
427 Mammium who creates fate decreed destinies with them.
428 They appointed death and life. They did not mark out days for death,
429 But they did so for life.
430 Gilgamesh spoke to him, to Utnafishtim the far-distant,
431 I look at thou, Utnafishtim, and your limbs are no different, you are just like me.
432 Indeed, you are not at all different you are just like me.
433 I feel the urge to prove myself against thou, to pick a fight against thou,
434 You lie on your back.
435 How you came to stand in the Anunnagi's assembly and sought eternal life?
436 Utnafishtim spoke to him, to Gilgamesh, let me reveal to you a closely guarded matter, Gilgamesh, and let me tell you the secret of the Anunnagi.
437 The sleeping and the dead are just like each other, death's picture cannot be drawn.
438 Shuruppak is a city that you yourself know,
439 Situated on the ban of the Euphrates.
439 That city was already old when the Anunnagi within it decided that the great Anunnagi should make a flood.
440 There was ANU their father,
441 Warrior Enlil their counselor,
442 Ninurta was their chamberlain,
443 Ennugi their canal-controller.
444 Far-Sighted Enqi swore the oath of secrecy with them, so he repeated their speech to a reed hut,
445 "Reed hut, reed hut, brick wall, brick