“Enkidu and Shamhat entered Uruk together. They were inseparable now. Enkidu was only slightly less tall than Gilgamesh and radiated strength and beauty just as he did. His chest was massive and hairy, his body wrapped in glittering clothes hardly suitable for a man. It was the first time he had seen a city, and for the inhabitants of Uruk it was the first time they had seen a being from the remote Cedar Forest in their streets.”

“During their journey to the Cedar Forest, after more than a month’s march, Enkidu built Gilgamesh a chamber for the god of dreams. They were at the top of a mountain and Gilgamesh had offered a libation, asking the mountain for a dream. So Enkidu prepared a suitable place for him to receive it. It was circular and had a door. Gilgamesh lay in the middle. For portents to appear you needed a closed place in the middle of the forest. As a man of the forest, Enkidu knew that. No one had taught him, but he was able to give the right advice.

“Many spoke of Humbaba as a monster. But he was a divine being who stayed away from the heavens because he preferred the Cedar Forest. You can’t kill a divine being in direct combat. You must approach him with dreams. That was the only thing that would work. That is why, when the two friends presented themselves to him, Humbaba felt betrayed by Enkidu and immediately said as much. The duel came as a consequence.”

“Enkidu knew dreams and they proved fatal for him. One night he saw the gods meeting in council. They couldn’t accept that a partly divine being had killed two entirely divine beings, Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. They must be avenged. But which of the two killers should pay? Enkidu, they decided at once, son of a gazelle and a wild donkey. From silence he was born and to silence he must return.

“Enkidu wept and began to speak to the imposing door that he had made with wood from the Cedar Forest. He spoke to the door as if it were a person, recalling the long hours and the skill it had taken to fashion and adorn it. He had dedicated it to Enlil, who had prompted him to kill Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, but Enlil had also been the first of the gods to demand Enkidu’s death. Perhaps the door too had hoped to last forever, protected by the god to whom it belonged. Yet one day an enemy king would come along and destroy it. ‘As is happening to me,’ said Enkidu.”

“The first exploit of Gilgamesh was the model of all exploits. He crossed six mountain ranges without finding the tree he wanted to cut down, a cedar. When he found it, on the seventh mountain range, he didn’t say a word and looked no farther. Using an axe forged specially for him in Uruk, he began to strike the tree. The young men who had come with him cut and stacked the branches. Gilgamesh went on mercilessly striking the trunk. The silence of the forest echoed with blows and thuds.