[Illustration:  073.jpg GILGAMES AND ARAD-EA NAVIGATING THEIR VESSEL.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the
     British Museum.  The original measures a little over an inch.

Arad-Ea and the hero took ship:  forty days’ tempestuous cruising brought them to the Waters of Death, which with a supreme effort they passed.  Beyond these they rested on their oars and loosed their girdles:  the happy island rose up before them, and Shamashnapishtim stood upon the shore, ready to answer the questions of his grandson.

None but a god dare enter his mysterious paradise:  the bark bearing an ordinary mortal must stop at some distance from the shore, and the conversation is carried on from on board.  Gilgames narrated once more the story of his life, and makes known the object of his visit; Shamashnapishtim answers him stoically that death follows from an inexorable law, to which it is better to submit with a good grace.  “However long the time we shall build houses, however long the time we shall put our seal to contracts, however long the time brothers shall quarrel with each other, however long the time there shall be hostility between kings, however long the time rivers shall overflow their banks, we shall not be able to portray any image of death.  When the spirits salute a man at his birth, then the genii of the earth, the great gods, Mamitu the moulder of destinies, all of them together assign a fate to him, they determine for him his life and death; but the day of his death remains unknown to him.”  Gilgames thinks, doubtless, that his forefather is amusing himself at his expense in preaching resignation, seeing that he himself had been able to escape this destiny.  “I look upon thee, Shamashnapishtim, and thy appearance has not changed:  thou art like me and not different, thou art like me and I am like thee.  Thou wouldest be strong enough of heart to enter upon a combat, to judge by thy appearance; tell me, then, how thou hast obtained this existence among the gods to which thou hast aspired?” Shamashnapishtim yields to his wish, if only to show him how abnormal his own case was, and indicate the merits which had marked him out for a destiny superior to that of the common herd of humanity.  He describes the deluge to him, and relates how he was able to escape from it by the favour of Ea, and how by that of Bel he was made while living a member of the army of the gods. “’And now,’ he adds, ’as far as thou art concerned, which one of the Gods will bestow upon thee the strength to obtain the life which thou seekest?  Come, go to sleep!’ Six days and seven nights he is as a man whose strength appears suspended, for sleep has fallen upon him like a blast of wind.  Shamashnapishtim spoke to his wife:  ’Behold this man who asks for life, and upon whom sleep has fallen like a blast of wind.’  The wife answers Shamashnapishtim, the man of distant lands:  ’Cast a spell upon him, this man, and he will eat of the magic broth; and the road by