" with a suggestion of his conquest
of two hemispheres, or what not. [59] The element Gil in Gilgamesh
would be regarded as a contraction of Gish-bil or gi-bil, in order
to furnish the meaning "father-hero," or Gil might be looked upon
as a variant for Gish, which would give us the "phonetic" form in
the Assyrian version dGish-gi-mash, [60] as well as such a variant
writing dGish-gi-mas-(si). Now a name like Gilgamesh, upon which we
may definitely settle as coming closest to the genuine form, certainly
impresses one as foreign, i.e., it is neither Sumerian nor Akkadian;
and we have already suggested that the circumstance that the hero of
the Epic is portrayed as a conqueror of Erech, and a rather ruthless
one at that, points to a tradition of an invasion of the Euphrates
Valley as the background for the episode in the first tablet of the
series. Now it is significant that many of the names in the "mythical"
dynasties, as they appear in Poebel's list, [61] are likewise foreign,
such as Mes-ki-in-ga-se-ir, son of the god Shamash (and the founder
of the "mythical" dynasty of Erech of which dGish-bil-ga-mesh is
the fifth member), [62] and En-me-ir-k?r his son. In a still earlier
"mythical" dynasty, we encounter names like Ga-lu-mu-um, Zu-ga-gi-ib,
Ar-pi, E-ta-na, [63] which are distinctly foreign, while such names as
En-me(n)-nun-na and Bar-sal-nun-na strike one again as "Sumerianized"
names rather than as genuine Sumerian formations.
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