hill, a magnificent cedar, and pleasant grateful shade.”  They surprised Khumbaba at the moment when he was about to take his outdoor exercise, cut off his head, and came back in triumph to Uruk.** “Gilgames brightened his weapons, he polished his weapons.  He put aside his war-harness, he put on his white garments, he adorned himself with the royal insignia, and bound on the diadem:  Gilgames put his tiara on his head, and bound on his diadem.”

* Khumbaba contains the name of the Elamite god, Khumba, whichenters into the composition of names of towns, like Ti- Khumbi; or into those of princes, as Khumbanigash, Khumbasundasa, Khumbasidh.  The comparison between Khumbaba and Combabos, the hero of a singular legend, current in the second century of our era, does not seem to be admissible, at least for the present.  The names agree well in sound, but, as Oppert has rightly said, no event in the history of Combabos finds a counterpart in anything we know of that of Khumbaba up to the present.

** G. Smith places at this juncture Gilgames’s accession to the throne; this is not confirmed by the fragments of the text known up to the present, and it is not even certain that the poem relates anywhere the exaltation and coronation of the hero.  It would appear even that Gilgames is recognized from the beginning as King of Uruk, the well- protected.

Ishtar saw him thus adorned, and the same passion consumed her which inflames mortals.* “To the love of Gilgames she raised her eyes, the mighty Ishtar, and she said, ’Come, Gilgames, be my husband, thou!  Thy love, give it to me, as a gift to me, and thou shalt be my spouse, and I shall be thy wife.  I will place thee in a chariot of lapis and gold, with golden wheels and mountings of onyx:  thou shalt be drawn in it by great lions, and thou shalt enter our house with the odorous incense of cedar-wood.  When thou shalt have entered our house, all the country by the sea shall embrace thy feet, kings shall bow down before thee, the nobles and the great ones, the gifts of the mountains and of the plain they will bring to thee as tribute.  Thy oxen shall prosper, thy sheep shall be doubly fruitful, thy mules shall spontaneously come under the yoke, thy chariot-horse shall be strong and shall galop, thy bull under the yoke shall have no rival.’” Gilgames repels this unexpected declaration with a mixed feeling of contempt and apprehension:  he abuses the goddess, and insolently questions her as to what has become of her mortal husbands during her long divine life.  “Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth, thou hast condemned him to weep from year to year.** Nilala, the spotted sparrow-hawk, thou lovedst him, afterward thou didst strike him and break his wing:  he continues in the wood and cries:  ’O, my wings!’*** Thou didst afterwards love a lion of mature strength, and then didst cause him to be rent by blows, seven at a time.**** Thou lovedst also a stallion magnificent in the battle; thou didst devote him to death by the goad and whip:  thou didst compel him to galop for ten leagues, thou didst devote him to exhaustion and thirst, thou didst devote to tears his mother Silili.