GILGAMESH, EABANI, AND THE DIVINE BULL. 71 
Very rarely we find Gilgamesh alone, or Gilgamesh and Eabani together, 
fighting the winged dragon. An indubitable case of this is seen in fig. 563, taken from 
the impression of a cylinder on a tablet of the period of Gudea. We have the same 
in figs. 187a and 187). As no cylinder had ever been published in which this scene 
is figured, I was, when I first saw one, inclined to suspect it to be an excellent forgery, 
but the impression on the tablet in my possession (fig. 563) is conclusive, and now 
two or three cylinders are known with this design. The conclusion is that Gil- 
gamesh and Eabani were conceived as overcoming not only the wild beasts, but 
also the mythologic monsters which caused terror to mortals, such as we see in 
Chapter xxix. The inscription on this cylinder reads: “ Lugula-ilu-mu, servant of 
Ludugga.”—Price. 
Eabani, the companion of Gilgamesh, the mightier satyr of Babylonian my- 
thology, half man and half bull, follows the artistic conventions of his superior. 
His head, shoulders, and arms are human, except that he carries a pair of bison’s— 
not buffalo’s—horns, and, when in profile and occasionally in front view, the ears 
of a bull; and the rest of his body is that of a bull. We may therefore fairly gather 
that the conception of Eabani had its rise not in the hot river valley, where the 

buffalo was the mightier and mor 
highlands. ‘The body of the bull, or bison, is hairy, unlike that of the buffalo, but 
like that of the American bison, and the sex is very strongly indicated. From the 
very earliest period Eabani may be drawn in profile, and either Gilgamesh or 
Eabani may also have the face in profile, while his companion may, on the same 
cylinder, be in front view. 
With Gilgamesh and Eabani must be mentioned the divine bull sent to avenge 
the insult of Gilgamesh to the love of Ishtar. He differs from Eabani especially 
in being more animal than human. Only his face, always in front view, is human, 
though with horns, while instead of having arms, like Eabani, with which he can 
fight, he has the bull’s fore legs. He is always attacked by Gilgamesh, and never by 
Eabani. By a peculiar convention the head of the divine bull is drawn on one side 
of the body, so as to conceal his neck, almost as if dissevered from it and always 
in front view. ‘There is, perhaps, no good reason to doubt that this figure is meant 
to represent the bull sent by Eabani at the request of Ishtar to punish Gilgamesh, 
but some early representations of Eabani seem to suggest that he may have been 
differentiated from an early form of Eabani and, as already suggested, the divine 
bull may in its origin have been merely a misdrawn bull, afterwards supposed to 
have a human face. Once, in the fine and very archaic cylinder (fig. 1415) in the 
de Clercq collection (plate v, fig. 41), the divine bull appears standing on his four 
feet, accompanied by the human-headed scorpion or eagle. But such a figure of 
a human-headed bull couchant is also shown in figs. 320, 321, 323. 
