In vain Gilgamesh appealed to his mother goddess to restore Ea-bani to him.  Then he turned to the gods, and Ea heard him.  Thereafter Nergal, god of death, caused the grave to yawn, and the spirit of Ea-bani arose like a wind gust.

Gilgamesh, still dreading death, spoke to the ghost of his friend, saying:  “Tell me, my friend, O tell me regarding the land in which thou dost dwell.”

Ea-bani made answer sorrowfully:  “Alas!  I cannot tell thee, my friend.  If I were to tell thee all, thou wouldst sit down and weep.”

Said Gilgamesh:  “Let me sit down and weep, but tell me regarding the land of spirits.”

The text is mutilated here, but it can be gathered that Ea-bani described the land where ill-doers were punished, where the young were like the old, where the worm devoured, and dust covered all.  But the state of the warrior who had been given burial was better than that of the man who had not been buried, and had no one to lament or care for him.  “He who hath been slain in battle,” the ghost said, “reposeth on a couch drinking pure water—­one slain in battle as thou hast seen and I have seen.  His head is supported by his parents:  beside him sits his wife.  His spirit doth not haunt the earth.  But the spirit of that man whose corpse has been left unburied and uncared for, rests not, but prowls through the streets eating scraps of food, the leavings of the feast, and drinking the dregs of vessels.”

So ends the story of Gilgamesh in the form which survives to us.

The journey of Gilgamesh to the Island of the Blessed recalls the journeys made by Odin, Hermod, Svipdag, Hotherus and others to the Germanic Hela.  When Hermod went to search for Balder, as the Prose Edda relates, he rode through thick darkness for nine days and nine nights ere he crossed the mountains.  As Gilgamesh met Sabitu, Hermod met Modgudur, “the maiden who kept the bridge” over the river Gjoll.  Svipdag, according to a Norse poem, was guided like the Babylonian hero by the moon god, Gevar, who instructed him what way he should take to find the irresistible sword.  Saxo’s Hother, who is instructed by “King Gewar”, crosses dismal mountains “beset with extraordinary cold".[217] Thorkill crosses a stormy ocean to the region of perpetual darkness, where the ghosts of the dead are confined in loathsome and dusty caves.  At the main entrance “the door posts were begrimed with the soot of ages".[218] In the Elder Edda Svipdag is charmed against the perils he will be confronted by as he fares “o’er seas mightier than men do know”, or is overtaken by night “wandering on the misty way “.[219] When Odin “downward rode into Misty Hel” he sang spells at a “witch’s grave”, and the ghost rose up to answer his questions regarding Balder.  “Tell me tidings of Hel”, he addressed her, as Gilgamesh addressed the ghost of Ea-bani.