There is also Tafa'i of Tahiti (Maori: Tawhaki) who went with his five brothers courting an underworld princess. As a test, the suitors 'were told to pull up by the roots an ava tree, which was possessed by a demon, and which had caused the death of all who had attempted to disturb it'. Three of the brothers were devoured by the demon; Tafa'i revived them, and then gladly renounced the hand of the princess. (Ava = Kava, and stands for the 'next-best-substitute' for Amrita, the drink of immortality which is the property of the gods; mythologically Polynesian Kawa resembles almost exactly the Soma of Vedic literature; even the role of the 'Kawa-filter' is an ancient Indian reminiscence; and, as befits the pseudo-drink-of-immortality, it is stolen, by Maui, or by Kaulu, exactly as happens in India, and in the Edda, and elsewhere).

Meanwhile Ishtar, scorned, goes up to heaven in a rage, and extracts from Anu the promise that he will send down the Bull of Heaven to avenge her. The Bull descends, awesome to behold. With his first snort he downs a hundred warriors. But the two heroes tackle him. Enkidu takes hold of him by the tail, so that Gilgamesh as espada can come in between the horns for the kill. The artisans of the town admire the size of those horns: 'thirty pounds was their content of lapis lazuli'. (Lapis lazuli is the color sacred to Styx, as we have seen. In Mexico it is turquoise.) Ishtar appears on the walls of Uruk and curses the two heroes who have shamed her, but Enkidu tears out the right thigh of the Bull of Heaven and flings it in her face, amidst brutal taunts. It seems to be part of established procedure in those circles. Susanowo did the same to the sun-goddess Amaterasu, and so did Odin the Wild Hunter to the man who stymied him.

A scene of popular triumph and rejoicings follows. But the gods have decided that Enkidu must die, and he is warned by a somber dream after he falls sick. The composition of the epic has been hitherto uncouth and repetitious and, although it remains repetitious, it becomes poetry here. The despair and terror of Gilgamesh at watching the death of his friend is a more searing scene than Prince Gautama's 'discovery' of mortality.

'Hearken unto me, O elders, (and give ear) unto me! // It is for Enk(idu), my friend, that I weep, // Crying bitterly like unto a wailing woman // (My friend), my (younger broth)er (?), who chased // the wild ass of the open country (and) the panther of the steppe. // Who seized and (killed) the bull of heaven; // Who overthrew Humbaba, that (dwelt) in the (cedar) forest - ! // Now what sleep is this that has taken hold of (thee)? // Thou hast become dark and canst not hear (me)'. // But he does not lift (his eyes). // He touched his heart, but it did not beat. // Then he veiled (his) friend like a bride (...) // He lifted his voice like a lion // Like a lioness robbed of (her) whelps ...

'When I die, shall I not be like unto Enkidu? // Sorrow has entered my heart // I am afraid of death and roam over the desert ... // (Him the fate of mankind has overtaken) // Six days and seven nights I wept over him // Until the worm fell on his face. // How can I be silent? How can I be quiet? // My friend, whom I loved, has turned to clay'.

Gilgamesh has no metaphysical temperament like the Lord Buddha. He sets out on his great voyage to find Utnapishtim the Distant, who dwells at 'the mouth of the rivers' and who can possibly tell him how to attain immortality. He arrives at the pass of the mountain Mashu ('Twins'), 'whose peaks reach as high as the banks of heaven - whose breast reaches down to the underworld - the scorpion people keep watch at its gate - those whose radiance is terrifying and whose look is death - whose frightful splendor overwhelms mountains - who at the rising and setting of the sun keep watch over the sun'. The hero is seized 'with fear and dismay', but as he pleads with them, the scorpion-men recognize his partly divine nature. They warn him that he is going to travel through a darkness no one has traveled, but open the gate for him.

'Along the road of the sun (he went?) - dense is the dark(ness and there is no light)' (Tabl. 9, col. 4, 46). The successive stretches of 1, then 2, then 3, and so on to 12 double-hours he travels in darkness. At last it is light, and he finds himself in a garden of precious stones, carnelian and lapis lazuli, where he meets Siduri, the divine barmaid, 'who dwells by the edge of the sea'. Under the eyes of severe philologists, slaves to exact 'truth', one dare not make light of this supposedly 'geographical' item with its faint surrealistic tang. Here is a perfectly divine barmaid by the edge of the sea, called by many names in many languages. Her bar should be as long as the famed one in Shanghai, for she has along her shelves not only wine and beer, but more outlandish and antiquated drinks from many cultures, drinks such as a honeymead, soma, sura (a kind of brandy), kawa, pulque, peyote-cocktail, decoctions of ginseng. In short, from everywhere she has the ritual intoxicating beverages which comfort the dreary souls who are denied the drink of immortality. One might call these drinks Lethe, after all.

Earnest translators have seriously concluded that the 'sea' at the edge of which the barmaid dwells must be the Mediterranean, but there have also been votes for the Armenian mountains. Yet the hero's itinerary suggests the celestial landscape instead, and the scorpion-men should be sought around Scorpius. The more so as lambda ypsilon Scorpii are counted among the Babylonian mashu-constellations, and these twins, lambda ypsilon, play an important role also in the so-called Babylonian Creation Epic, as weapons of Marduk." (Hamlet's Mill)