Enkidu and the Netherworld

Tablet XII does not belong to the main narrative. It is a partial Akkadian translation of an older Sumerian poem, attached at the end of the standard version, and most modern editions print it as an appendix. Enkidu is alive again with no explanation; his death two tablets earlier is not addressed. Read it as a separate piece by the same hand.

Gilgamesh, in this poem, has lost his pukku and mikku — a drum and drumstick, or hoop and stick; the philology is unsettled. They have fallen through a crack in the floor of his palace, down to the netherworld. Enkidu, hearing his friend lament, offers to go down and retrieve them. Gilgamesh warns him carefully about the rules of the underworld: do not wear clean clothes, or the dead will know you are alive; do not anoint yourself with oil, or they will swarm; do not throw a throwing-stick; do not kiss your loved ones; do not strike those you hate. Enkidu agrees. He goes down. He breaks every rule.

He is caught. The underworld will not let him go. Gilgamesh weeps and goes to god after god begging for his return — Enlil refuses, Sin refuses, Ea agrees. Through Ea's intercession a hole is opened in the earth and Enkidu's spirit comes briefly up. Gilgamesh pours questions into the opening: tell me what is down there. Enkidu answers, soul by soul, who is at peace and who is not. The man with one son: he weeps bitterly. The man with seven sons: he sits among the gods and listens to music. The stillborn child: it plays at a golden table. The man burned in fire: he is gone, no spirit, nothing left to come back. The catalogue is the poem's last word about the dead. The tablet ends there.