226 - Then Gilgamesh wept some more for his dead friend. He wandered over barren hills, mumbling to his own spirit: "Will you too die as Enkidu did?

227 - Will grief become your food? Will we both fear the lonely hills, so vacant? I now race from place to place, dissatisfied with wherever I am and turn my step toward Utnapishtim, godchild of Ubaratutu, who lives a pious life in fair Dilmun where the morning sun arises as it does in paradises lost and won.

228 - As if in sleep I come upon the mountain door at midnight where I face wild-eyed lions and I am afraid.

229 - Then to Sin, the god of mighty light, I raise my solemn chant to beg: 'Save me, please, my god.' Despite respite he could not sleep or dream that night.

230 - Instead he wandered through the woods so like a savage beast just then did he bring death again and again upon the lions' heads with an ax he drew from off his belt.

232 - Now these identical towers touch the distant, distant sky, and far below, their breasts descend toward Hell. Those who guard the gate are poison scorpions who terrorize all, whose spells bring death.

233 - And then resplendent power thrives all across the town where I was born and rises farther still to mountain tops. At dawn and dark they shield Shamash.

234 - And when he sensed them there, Gilgamesh could not dare to look upon their threat; but held his glance away, suspended fear, and then approached in dread.

236 - And then the same one said to the god-like part of Gilgamesh: "Eternal heart, why make this long, long trip trying to come to us through travail? Speak now."

237 - Gilgamesh said: "I come by here to visit my elder, my Utnapishtim, the epitome of both life everlasting and death that is eternal."

238 - The poison scorpion guardian said: "No mortal man has ever come to know what you seek here.

240 - Heartache pain abounds with ice or fire all around. The scorpion one, I do not know whether a man or a woman, said then: "Gilgamesh, I command you to proceed to highest peaks over hills toward heaven. Godspeed!

241 - With all permissions given here, I approve your venture." So Gilgamesh set out then over that sacred, sacred path within the mountains of Mashu, near that incarnate ray of sunshine precious to Shamash.

242 - Oh dark, dark, dark, dark. Oh the night, unholy and blind, that wrapped him as soon as he stepped forth upon that path.

243 - DARKNESS Beneath a moonless, starless sky, Gilgamesh was frozen and unseeing by time before midnight; by midnight's hollow eye he was unseen and frozen.

244 - At 1 a.m. he tripped and fell blinded and frozen. At 2 a.m. he staggered on blinded and frozen. At 3 a.m. he faltered not blinded and frozen.

246 - And at your final dawn, son of man, you will see only a heap of broken images in an ascending light that gives you sight you may not want, for you will then behold all precious goods and gardens sweet as home to you, as exile, boughs of blue, oh unforgotten gem, as true as any other memory from any other previous life.

247 - Then along the path Gilgamesh traveled fast and came at length to shorelines fresh with dew.