[18]
We must distinguish, therefore, between the earliest _literary_ form,
which was undoubtedly Sumerian, and the _origin_ of the episodes
embodied in the Epic, including the chief actors, Gilgamesh and his
companion Enkidu. It will be shown that one of the chief episodes,
the encounter of the two heroes with a powerful guardian or ruler
of a cedar forest, points to a western region, more specifically to
Amurru, as the scene. The names of the two chief actors, moreover,
appear to have been "Sumerianized" by an artificial process, [19]
and if this view turns out to be correct, we would have a further
ground for assuming the tale to have originated among the Akkadian
settlers and to have been taken over from them by the Sumerians.
III.
New light on the earliest Babylonian version of the Epic, as well
as on the Assyrian version, has been shed by the recovery of two
substantial fragments of the form which the Epic had assumed in
Babylonia in the Hammurabi period. The study of this important new
material also enables us to advance the interpretation of the Epic
and to perfect the analysis into its component parts. In the spring
of 1914, the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania acquired by
purchase a large tablet, the writing of which as well as the style
and the manner of spelling verbal forms and substantives pointed
distinctly to the time of the first Babylonian dynasty.
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