Br?nnow No. 5967).
We would thus obtain an entirely artificial combination, "man (or
hero), father, hero," which would simply convey in an emphatic manner
the idea of the _Ur-held_, the original hero, the father of heroes as
it were--practically the same idea, therefore, as the one conveyed
by Gish alone, as the hero _par excellence_. Our investigation thus
leads us to a substantial identity between Gish and the longer form
Gish-bil(or b?l)-ga-mesh, and the former might, therefore, well be used
as an abbreviation of the latter. Both the shorter and the longer forms
are _descriptive epithets _based on naive folk etymology, rather than
personal names, just as in the designation of our hero as _muktablu_,
the "fighter," or as _?lik p?na_, "the leader," or as _Esigga imin_,
"the seven-fold hero," or _Esigga tuk_, "the one who is a hero," are
descriptive epithets, and as Atra-hasis, "the very wise one," is such
an epithet for the hero of the deluge story. The case is different with
Gi-il-ga-mesh, or Gish-g?(n)-mash, which represent the popular and
actual pronunciation of the name, or at least the _approach_ to such
pronunciation. Such forms, stripped as they are of all artificiality,
impress one as genuine names.
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