Along Humbaba’s beaten path, they stalked, deep into the forest, axe and knife in hand.

They came to the mouth of the monster’s den, where he awaited them.

Their blood surged like cold water through their veins.

Seeing the two companions, the monster grimaced, bared his tusk-like teeth—roared his deafening roar.

Humbaba glared at Gilgamesh. “Young man, you will never return home. Ready yourself for death.”

Dread overcame Gilgamesh, terror drowning his muscles, stilling his heart, drying his mouth, making his legs shake as his feet clung to the ground like roots.

Seeing this, Enkidu said, “Companion, warrior, hero, don’t lose courage. Remember that ‘two boats lashed together never sink. A three-ply rope is not easily broken.’ If we stand and fight together no harm shall come. Let us attack.”

They trespassed toward the monster’s lair.

Humbaba charged forth, roaring and giving cruel voice, “Gilgamesh, you are known to me. Don’t be foolish. Go away. Leave the Cedar Forest. Have the insane advised you to challenge me? I will rend you limb from limb, crush you, leave you a gory ruin on the ground. And you, Enkidu! You son of river spawn, you gutless, fatherless fish who never sucked mother’s milk, I saw you in the pastures when you were young. I saw you graze with the wandering herds, but I did not kill you, too meatless you were—you were not even fit to dine upon! And now you dare to lead Gilgamesh here, standing before me like a pair of frightened girls.

“I shall slit your throats.

“I will cut off your heads.

“I shall feed your reeking guts to the shrieking vultures and cawing crows.”

Gilgamesh reeled back. “How terrible is Humbaba’s face! It is changing into a thousand nightmare visages, too horrible to bear. I am haunted, held back by freezing fear.”

Enkidu spoke, “Companion, do not speak as a coward. Your words are unworthy of you, paining my heart. We must not hesitate or retreat. We cannot be defeated while standing together. Remember your might. I am with you, attack!”

Gilgamesh felt his courage flood back into his being. They charged Humbaba like wild bulls. The monster let out a deafening cry, booming like thunder, stamping the ground so hard that the ground split.

His footfall split the mountains of Lebanon. The clouds roiled back and a sulfurous mist descended and burned their eyes.

The Mighty Sun, patron of dreamers and travelers, struck a blow for Gilgamesh, hurling winds at Humbaba from south, north, east and west, storm wind, gale wind, sea wind and whirlwind, pinning him to earth and halting his steps. Humbaba could not advance or retreat.

Seeing the monster helpless, Gilgamesh leaped on him and pressed knife to throat.

Humbaba pleaded, “Mercy, Gilgamesh. Let me live here in the Cedar Forest. Spare me and I shall be your slave. I will give as many cedars as you wish. You are king of Uruk by the grace of The Sun. Honor him with a cedar temple and a sumptuous cedar palace for yourself. All this is yours, if only you spare me.”

Enkidu said, “Companion, don’t listen to the words of the monster. Kill him before you become confused.”

Humbaba pleaded, “If any mortal, Enkidu, knows the rules of my forest, surely it is you. This is my place and I its guardian. The Universal Wind placed me here to terrify men. I guard the forest as he ordains. Kill me, and the wrath of gods shall fall severely upon you. I might have killed you, puny one, at the forest’s edge. I could have hung you from a cedar, letting the shrieking vultures and cawing crows fatten on your guts. Now it is your turn to be merciful. Speak to Gilgamesh. Beg him to spare my life.”

Enkidu turned to Gilgamesh, “Companion, swiftly, before another moment passes, kill Humbaba. Don’t listen to his words, don’t hesitate, slaughter him, slit his throat before The Universal Wind stops us, before the greater gods can rage from their shrines in Nippur and Larsa. Stamp your name in Time, so that forever men will speak of brave Gilgamesh, who slew Humbaba in the Cedar Forest.”

Sensing his doom, Humbaba cried out, “I curse you both for doing this, Enkidu to die in suffering pain and Gilgamesh to be inconsolable—may his merciless heart drown in grief.”

Gilgmesh dropped his axe, appalled.

Enkidu said, “Courage, companion. Close your ears to the curses of Humbaba. Listen not. Slaughter him, now!”

Heeding his companion, Gilgamesh broke the monster’s spell. He yelled, hefted his heavy axe, and stroked hard so that the axe bit deep into Humbaba’s neck with a gout of blood.

Again he chopped, the axe cleaving flesh and biting bone, the monster staggering, eyes rolling.

The third stroke of the axe caused Humbaba to crash to earth like a felled cedar. At his death call the mountains of Lebanon quaked, the valleys ran red with his blood, the forest resounding with his death call.

The companions sliced him open, drew forth his intestines, cut off his terrible head with tusk-like teeth and wickedly staring bloodshot eyes.

The mountains were now bathed beneath a gently falling rain.

They took up their axes and went further into the forest, chopping down cedars, letting woodchips fly. Gilgamesh chopped down the mighty trees. Enkidu hewed the trunks into timbers. Enkidu said, “By your might you have killed Humbaba, the forest’s guardian. What could dishonor you now? We have felled the trees of the Cedar Forest, have brought down to earth the mightiest among them, the cedar whose top once pierced the sky. We shall fashion of it a gigantic door, a hundred cubits high and thirty wide, will float it down the Great River to the temple of The Universal Wind at Nippur. No man shall go through it, but only gods. May The Universal Wind delight in it, may it be a joy to the folk of Nippur.”

They lashed logs together and built a raft.

Enkidu steered the raft down the Great River.

Gilgamesh stood upon the raft, Humbaba’s head in one mighty hand.

Book Five is broken cleanly into the first, minor, half, of Enkidu’s terror, and the second, major, half, of Gilgamesh’s haunting fear. Taken as a whole they paint a picture of two warriors seeing each other through the trials of a quest.

Having found himself too long separated from his origins to regard the primal forest without terror, Gilgamesh, like the many English settlers who colonized the North American coast, regarded the awesome primal forest with dread.

Enkidu, previously terrified at the prospect of confronting the natural order, is now seduced with the urge to overcome it.

Humbaba offers Gilgamesh the choice of establishing stewardship over the forest, or destroying it. The king chooses conquest by destruction. The reader should recall that, by the reign of Gilgamesh, desertification was already beginning in the Middle East, yet their remained a racial memory of a lush landscape.

In Indo-European ritual the axe was the weapon of sacrifice, the weapon used to cleave the neck of man’s livestock. The death of Humbaba is depicted as a sacrifice. After his death the forest is cruelly treated. Overall we are witness to a picture of Civilized Man and Primitive Man joining hands to destroy the natural world which has defined one and limited the other, now to be used to seek god powers, literally building a stairway to heaven.

This is a scene of prophecy, prophecy which has come true countless times in the life of Man, as civilization has rarely gained a foothold in the wilderness without the complicity, by way of seduction, of the primitives who dwell therein.