GILGAMESH, EABANI, AND THE DIVINE BULL. 63 
or en face, although the latter type became predominant later. The animals with 
whom Gilgamesh and Eabani are in conflict are the lion, the bull (or rather bison), 
the deer, the oryx or ibex, and occasionally the leopard. It is to be remembered that 
in the earlier period the buffalo of the swamp district of lower Babylonia does not 
appear. Eabani wears the horns of the bison and not of the buffalo, and we have 
the human-headed bull with bull’s horns. This seems to show that the art and 
its mythology had their origin not in southern Babylonia, but probably in Elam. 
Later, in the time of Sargon, the buffalo often takes the place of the bison, as a more 
dangerous animal and an even greater prize for the hunter, or, perhaps, as the only 
one known in the river country. The bull-bison is the Bison bonasus and the water- 
buffalo is Bos bubalus. ‘They are described in Chapter xx on the zoology of the 
cylinders. The buffalo is the strongest beast of burden after the elephant, black 
and hairless, and doubtless was indigenous in the swamps of Babylonia, as also in 
all southern Asia. It is still wild in India and Formosa. The Bison bonasus is 
still wild in the Caucasus and is preserved in Lithuania. 
TY 
BP 
154 
Gilgamesh is said to have been a king of Erech, and a wall of Erech was attrib- 
uted to him. It is quite possible that he was an actual ruler afterwards deified. 
He was a mighty warrior, and the goddess Aruru created the half-man, half-bull 
Eabani to resist and overcome him. The seals sometimes represent them in conflict. 
Eabani was clothed with hair, and ate and drank with the beasts of the field. Gilga- 
mesh, “the huntsman,” failed to capture Eabani, until one of the courtesans of the 
temple of Ishtar enticed him to live with men, and become the ally instead of the 
enemy of Gilgamesh. Together they fought against the tyrant Khumbaba, who 
lived in the forests of Elam, an apparent indication that they represent a Semitic 
race and myth, although Genesis 10: 23 makes Elam the eldest son of Shem. But 
very little confidence can be placed in this conclusion, inasmuch as the form in 
which we have the epic of Gilgamesh is of a comparatively late recension, and the 
earlier Sumerian version may have undergone various changes—just as the myth 
of the fight of Marduk and Tiamat is a modification, belonging to the time of 
Hammurabi, of a story which first represented the conflict as between Ea and Apsu, 
and next of Enlil and Tiamat. After the victory of the allied heroes over Khumbaba, 
Gilgamesh rejected the proposal of Ishtar that he be her husband, and in revenge 
for his scorn Ishtar persuaded her father Anu to fashion a monstrous bull to ravage 
his country; but with the help of Eabani the beast was slain. In anger Ishtar 
cursed both the heroes with sickness, of which Eabani died, while Gilgamesh 
undertakes a long and perilous journey to Adrahasis, the Chaldean Noah, who 
had achieved immortality, in search of the same boon. Adrahasis, or Xisuthros, 
tells Gilgamesh the story of the deluge and how he achieved immortality, and he 
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