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Anonymous

"An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic"

" See the passages
given by Muss-Arnolt, _Assyrian Dictionary_, p. 1139b.
Line 148. The reading _uk-la-at_, "food," and then in the wider
sense "food supply," "provisions," is quite certain. The fourth sign
looks like the one for "city." _E-mi-sa_ may stand for _e-mid-sa_,
"place it." The general sense of the line, at all events, is clear, as
giving the advice to gather resources. It fits in with the Babylonian
outlook on life to regard work and wealth as the fruits of work and
as a proper purpose in life.
Line 150 (repeated lines 152-153) is a puzzling line. To render _piti
p?k epsi_ (or _episi_), as Langdon proposes, "open, addressing thy
speech," is philologically and in every other respect inadmissible. The
word _pu-uk_ (which Langdon takes for "thy mouth"!!) can, of course,
be nothing but the construct form of _pukku_, which occurs in the
Assyrian version in the sense of "net" (_pu-uk-ku_ I, 2, 9 and
21, and also in the colophon to the eleventh tablet furnishing the
beginning of the twelfth tablet (Haupt's edition No. 56), as well as
in column 2, 29, and column 3, 6, of this twelfth tablet). In the two
last named passages _pukku_ is a synonym of _mek?_, which from the
general meaning of "enclosure" comes to be a euphemistic expression
for the female organ.


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