" The writing with d?g,
pronounced du, also shows that the sign d? as the third element in the
form which the name has in the Assyrian version is to be read d?, and
that former readings like Ea-bani must be definitely abandoned. [41]
The form with d? is clearly a _phonetic_ writing of the Sumerian name,
the sign d? being chosen to indicate the _pronunciation_ (not the
ideograph) of the third element d?g. This is confirmed by the writing
En-gi-d? in the syllabary _CT_ XVIII, 30, 10. The phonetic writing
is, therefore, a warning against any endeavor to read the name by
an Akkadian transliteration of the signs. This would not of itself
prove that Enkidu is of Sumerian _origin_, for it might well be that
the writing En-ki-d? is an endeavor to give a Sumerian _aspect_ to
a name that _may_ have been foreign. The element d?g corresponds to
the Semitic _t?bu_, "good," and En-ki being originally a designation
of a deity as the "lord of the land," which would be the Sumerian
manner of indicating a Semitic Baal, it is not at all impossible
that En-ki-d?g may be the "Sumerianized" form of a Semitic BA`L TZOB
"Baal is good." It will be recalled that in the third column of the
Yale tablet, Enkidu speaks of himself in his earlier period while
still living with cattle, as wandering into the cedar forest of
Huwawa, while in another passage (ll.
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