"They stood and looked on the forest, They regarded the height of the cedar, They regarded the depth of the forest, Where Humbaba walked, striding high (?), The roads prepared, the way made good. They saw the mountain of the cedar, the dwelling of the gods, the shrine of the god Irnini, Before the mountain the cedar raised its luxuriance-- Good was its shade, full of delight."
They had still a long way to go, however, and many things, seemingly, to overcome, before they should reach the abode of the dreaded Elamite ruler, but unfortunately, the details of their adventures are so very fragmentary that no connected sense whatever is to be made out. The last line of the tablet referring to this section, mentioning, as it does, the head of Humbaba, leads the reader to guess the conclusion of the story, whatever the details may have been.
It is with the sixth tablet that we meet, for the first time, almost, with something really satisfactory in the matter of completeness, though even here one is sometimes pulled up sharp by a defective or doubtful passage.
Apparently, Gilgames had become, at the time to which this tablet refers, very prosperous, and that, combined with his other attractions, evidently drew upon him the attention of the goddess Istar--
"Come, Gilgames, be thou the bridegroom, Give thy substance to me as a gift, Be thou my husband, and let me be thy wife. I will cause to be yoked for thee a chariot of lapis-lazuli and gold, Whose wheels are gold and adamant its poles. Thou shalt harness thereto the white ones, the great steeds. Enter into our house mid the scent of the cedar."
At his entering, the people were to kiss his feet, and kings, lords, and princes do him homage, and lastly, he was to have no rival upon the earth.
In the mutilated passage that follows, Gilgames answers the goddess, reproaching her with her treatment of her former lovers or husbands, which seems to have been far from satisfactory. Reference to a "wall of stone," and to "the land of the enemy," seem to point to imprisonment and expulsion, and the words "Who is the bridegroom (whom thou hast kept?) for ever?" indicate clearly the opinion in which the hero held the goddess. From generalities, however, he proceeds to more specific charges--