CHAPTER XI. 
GILGAMESH WITH STREAMS. 
We have seen in fig. 26, the famous seal of the Elder Sargon, the extraordinary 
design in which a figure like Gilgamesh, fallen on his knee, holds up a vase, out of 
which spout two streams of water, while a buffalo raises his head to drink from the 
stream. One can hardly fail here to recognize the purpose of the artist to represent 
the importance of water and the fact that it is the gift of the gods. The same 
thought is expressed in fig. 129, where a vase in the sky is pouring out its stream 
to the earth. The same impression is given by the frequent representations of the 
solar disk, with its alternate rays and streams, as in the Abuhabba bas-relief (fig. 
310), and even more, if possible, in the very frequent representations of a vase in 
the upper portion of the designs on the seals. That Gilgamesh is the personage 
represented on the Sargon cylinder is by no means settled. ‘To be sure it is his 
face, in front view, with his curls; but just as the bearded and seated god may 
represent several different gods and kings, owing to the paucity of design and the 
inability to draw a portrait, so this conventional form of Gilgamesh may represent 
other beings than he. We know, in the somewhat full story of Gilgamesh, no inci- 
dent or attribute which suggests his giving of water to the world as Prometheus 
gave fire. But, while we shall find other representations of a deity, such as the 
seated Shamash who holds a vase with streams, and while it will be necessary in 
a later chapter to discuss the spouting vase, the number of cases in which Gilga- 
mesh, or a god resembling him, is the giver of water is so great that it is necessary 
here to bring them into separate notice. 
Gilgamesh with streams, if we may call him Gilgamesh, does not occur promi- 
nently in the most archaic art. He appears not much before the time of Sargon L., 
which, although early, is not actually archaic. He is represented, as in the Sargon 
cylinder, as a principal figure in the design, but quite as frequently as a subsidiary 
figure, and of reduced size to fill up a space otherwise vacant. He would hardly 
seem to represent a primary god, but rather an attendant or assistant god, whose 
service is directed by a chief deity. We get the same idea from the service which 
he and Eabani, or a figure like Eabani, render in standing by a god and holding a 
sort of mace before him; and the fact of his nudity suggests service rather than 
any principal role, inasmuch as naked male figures are generally servants, bearing 
offerings. 
Thus in fig. 648 we see Gilgamesh, for we will call him so, but with reserve, 
standing in attendance before a principal god in a shrine of waters, whom, in a 
luminous paper, M. Heuzey identifies with Ea. But that Gilgamesh himself is 
identified with the gift of water is at least suggested by fig. 203. Here it is evidently 
Gilgamesh who lifts two buffaloes by the hind leg, but on each side of him the 
streams of a spouting vase fall to the ground. ‘This is one of the few cases, like that 
of the Sargon seal, in which the cylinder connecting Gilgamesh with the gift of water 
is of an early period. Most of the cases are later, from the time of Gudea downward. 
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