Lines 40-44 of column 3, in which Gilgamesh
is represented as speaking to the hunter form a complete _doublet_
to lines 19-24, beginning
"Go, my hunter, take with thee a woman, etc."
and similarly the description of Enkidu appears twice, lines 2-12
in an address of the hunter to his father, and lines 29-39 in the
address of the hunter to Gilgamesh.
The artificiality of the process of introducing Gilgamesh into
the episode is revealed by this awkward and entirely meaningless
repetition. We may therefore reconstruct the first two scenes in the
Enkidu Epic as follows: [106]
Tablet I, col. 2, 34-35: Creation of Enkidu by Aruru.
36-41: Description of Enkidu's hairy body and of his life with the
animals.
42-50: The hunter sees Enkidu, who shows his anger, as also his woe,
at his condition.
3, 1-12: The hunter tells his father of the strange being who pulls
up the traps which the hunter digs, and who tears the nets so that
the hunter is unable to catch him or the animals.
19-24: The father of the hunter advises his son on his next expedition
to take a woman with him in order to lure the strange being from his
life with the animals.
Line 25, beginning "On the advice of his father," must have set forth,
in the original form of the episode, how the hunter procured the
woman and took her with him to meet Enkidu.
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