At twenty mortal marches they broke their fast.
At forty-three mortal marches they made camp, having travelled for three days and three nights, a six week journey for mortal men.
As the Sun set they dug a well and filled their waterskins with fresh water.
Gilgamesh climbed to the mountaintop and there poured out flour in offering and prayed, “Mountain, bring me a blessed dream."
Enkidu performed the rite of dreams, praying for a sign.
The wind gusted in answer.
He made a shelter against the coming night, sat Gilgamesh on the floor and traced a magic circle of flour around him, then blocked the doorway like a net. There Gilgamesh sat, chin to knees, and sleep overtook, him as it does all men.
At midnight he awoke and said to Enkidu, “What happened? Did you touch me? Did a god pass in the night? Why does my skin crawl? Why do I shiver? Enkidu, friend, I had a dream, a horrible dream. We were walking in a gorge and when I looked up, a massive mountain loomed, so large that we were as flies before it. The mountain then fell upon us. What does this mean?”
Enkidu counseled, “Do not worry, friend, the dream is a blessing. The mountain represents Humbaba. He shall fall like the mountain in the dream. The Sun will shine upon us. We shall slay the monster and leave his carcass for the carrion birds.”
Gilgamesh, happy with his blessed dream, smiled, his face bright with pleasure.
Notes
Book Four is clearly a story of a chief and a shaman on a migratory vision quest, which brings to mind the journey of the Crow from the Great Lakes Basin to their Rocky Mountain homeland. The exaggerated distances and gigantic strides attributed to the adventurers may be allegorical allusions to a generations long migration of a nomadic people over vast distances.
Enkidu is now firmly established as the King’s shaman, representing his link to our primal origins.
The flour, being the end product of Man’s bargain with the various gods necessary to insure the life of a city, indicate that Gilgamesh and Enkidu are not simply questing for individual transcendent goals, but on behalf of their people.
Sleep, in this story, is a metaphor for death, and communing with the ancestral world.
