IV.
Coming to the contents of the two tablets, the Pennsylvania tablet
deals with the meeting of the two heroes, Gilgamesh and Enkidu,
their conflict, followed by their reconciliation, while the Yale
tablet in continuation takes up the preparations for the encounter of
the two heroes with the guardian of the cedar forest, Humbaba--but
probably pronounced Hubaba [27]--or, as the name appears in the old
Babylonian version, Huwawa. The two tablets correspond, therefore,
to portions of Tablets I to V of the Assyrian version; [28] but,
as will be shown in detail further on, the number of _completely_
parallel passages is not large, and the Assyrian version shows an
independence of the old Babylonian version that is larger than we
had reason to expect. In general, it may be said that the Assyrian
version is more elaborate, which points to its having received its
present form at a considerably later period than the old Babylonian
version. [29] On the other hand, we already find in the Babylonian
version the tendency towards repetition, which is characteristic
of Babylonian-Assyrian tales in general. Through the two Babylonian
tablets we are enabled to fill out certain details of the two episodes
with which they deal: (1) the meeting of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and
(2) the encounter with Huwawa; while their greatest value consists
in the light that they throw on the gradual growth of the Epic until
it reached its definite form in the text represented by the fragments
in Ashurbanapal's Library.
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