feet by the sorceress, whom he had married and afterwards offended; he remained lying on a bed, from which he could not get down, and the unfaithful one came daily to whip him.

“When Ishtar heard him, she fell into a fury, she ascended to heaven.  The mighty Ishtar presented herself before her father Anu, before her mother Anatu she presented herself, and said:  ’My father, Grilgames has despised me.  Grilgames has enumerated my unfaithfulnesses, my unfaithfulnesses and my ignominies.’  Anu opened his mouth and spake to the mighty Ishtar:  ’Canst thou not remain quiet now that Gilgames has enumerated to thee thy unfaithfulnesses, thy unfaithfulnesses and ignominies?’” But she refused to allow the outrage to go unpunished.  She desired her father to make a celestial urus who would execute her vengeance on the hero; and, as he hesitated, she threatened to destroy every living thing in the entire universe by suspending the impulses of desire, and the effect of love.  Anu finally gives way to her rage:  he creates a frightful urus, whose ravages soon rendered uninhabitable the neighbourhood of Uruk the well-protected.  The two heroes, Gilgames and Eabani, touched by the miseries and terror of the people, set out on the chase, and hastened to rouse the beast from its lair on the banks of the Euphrates in the marshes, to which it resorted after each murderous onslaught.

[Illustration:  068.jpg GILGAMES AND EABANI FIGHTING WITH MONSTERS.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the New
     York Museum.  The original is about an inch and a half in
     height.

A troop of three hundred valiant warriors penetrated into the thickets in three lines to drive the animal towards the heroes.  The beast with head lowered charged them; but Eabani seized it with one hand by the right horn, and with the other by the tail, and forced it to rear.  Gilgames at the same instant, seizing it by the leg, plunged his dagger into its heart.  The beast being despatched, they celebrated their victory by a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and poured out a libation to Sharnash, whose protection had not failed them in this last danger.  Ishtar, her projects of vengeance having been defeated, “ascended the ramparts of Uruk the well-protected.  She sent forth a loud cry, she hurled forth a malediction:  ’Cursed be Gilgames, who has insulted me, and who has killed the celestial urus.’  Eabani heard these words of Ishtar, he tore a limb from the celestial urus and threw it in the face of the goddess:  ’Thou also I will conquer, and I will treat thee like him:  I will fasten the curse upon thy sides.’  Ishtar assembled her priestesses, her female votaries, her frenzied women, and together they intoned a dirge over the limb of the celestial urus.  Gilgames assembled all the turners in ivory, and the workmen were astonished at the enormous size of the horns; they were worth thirty mimae of lapis, their diameter was a half-cubit, and both of them could contain