* The identity of Gilgames with the Accadian fire-god, or rather with the sun, was recognized from the first by H. Rawlinson, and has been accepted since by almost all Assyriologists.  A tablet brought back by G. Smith, called attention to by Fr. Delitzsch, and published by Haupt, contains the remains of a hymn addressed to Gilgames, “the powerful king, the king of the Spirits of the Earth.”

[Illustration:  057.jpg GILGAMES STRANGLES A LION.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from
     Khorsabad, in the Museum of the Louvre

The whole story is essentially an account of his struggles with Ishtar, and the first pages reveal him as already at issue with the goddess.  His portrait, such as the monuments have preserved it for us, is singularly unlike the ordinary type:  one would be inclined to regard it as representing an individual of a different race, a survival of some very ancient nation which had held rule on the plains of the Euphrates before the arrival of the Sumerian or Semitic* tribes.

* Smith (The Chaldaean Account of Genesis, p. 194) remarked the difference between the representations of Gilgames and the typical Babylonian:  he concluded from this that the hero was of Ethiopian origin.  Hommel declares that his features have neither a Sumerian nor Semitic aspect, and that they raise an insoluble question in ethnology.

His figure is tall, broad, muscular to an astonishing degree, and expresses at once vigour and activity; his head is massive, bony, almost square, with a somewhat flattened face, a large nose, and prominent cheek-bones, the whole framed by an abundance of hair, and a thick beard symmetrically curled.  All the young men of Uruk, the well-protected, were captivated by the prodigious strength and beauty of the hero; the elders of the city betook themselves to Ishtar to complain of the state of neglect to which the young generation had relegated them.  “He has no longer a rival in their hearts, but thy subjects are led to battle, and Gilgames does not send one child back to his father.  Night and day they cry after him:  ’It is he the shepherd of Uruk, the well-protected, he is its shepherd and master, he the powerful, the perfect and the wise.’” Even the women did not escape the general enthusiasm:  “he leaves not a single virgin to her mother, a single daughter to a warrior, a single wife to her master.  Ishtar heard their complaint, the gods heard it, and cried with a loud voice to Aruru:  ’It is thou, Aruru, who hast given him birth; create for him now his fellow, that he may be able to meet him on a day when it pleaseth him, in order that they may fight with each other and Uruk may be delivered.’When Aruru heard them, she created in her heart a man of Anu.  Aruru washed her hands, took a bit of clay, cast it upon the earth, kneaded it and created Babani, the warrior, the exalted scion, the man of Ninib, whose whole body is covered with hair, whose tresses