f, thou didst
set him up on the middle of a couch; he could not rise up, he could not
get down from where he was. Thou lovest me now, afterwards thou wilt
strike me as thou didst these."**

* The changing of a lover, by the goddess or sorceress
who loves him, into a beast, occurs pretty frequently in
Oriental tales; as to the man changed by Ishtar into a
brute, which she caused to be torn by his own hounds, we may
compare the classic story of Artemis surprised at her bath
by Actseon.

** As to the misfortune of Ishullanu, we may compare the
story in the _Abrabian Nights_ of the Fisherman and the
Genie shut up in the leaden bottle. The king of the Black
Islands was transformed into a statue from the waist to the
feet by the sorceress, whom he had married and afterwards
offended; he remained lying on a bed, from which he could
not get down, and the unfaithful one came daily to whip him.

"When Ishtar heard him, she fell into a fury, she ascended to heaven.
The mighty Ishtar presented herself before her father Anu, before her
mother Anatu she presented herself, and said: 'My father, Grilgames
has despised me. Grilgames has enumerated my unfaithfulnesses, my
unfaithfulnesses and my ignominies.' Anu opened his mouth and spake to
the mighty Ishtar: 'Canst thou not remain quiet now that Gilgames
has enumerated to thee thy unfaithfulnesses, thy unfaithfulnesses and
ignominies?'" But she refused to allow the outrage to go unpunished.
She desired her father to make a celestial urus who would execute her
vengeance on the hero; and, as he hesitated, she threatened to destroy
every living thing in the entire universe by suspending the impulses of
desire, and the effect of love. Anu finally gives way to her rage: he
creates a frightful urus, whose ravages soon rendered uninhabitable the
neighbourhood of Uruk the well-protected. The two heroes, Gilgames and
Eabani, touched by the miseries and terror of the people, set out on the
chase, and hastened to rouse the beast from its lair on the banks of
the Euphrates in the marshes, to which it resorted after each murderous
onslaught.

[Illustration: 068.jpg GILGAMES AND EABANI FIGHTING WITH MONSTERS.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the New
York Museum. The original is about an inch and a half in
height.

A troop of three hundred valiant warriors penetrated into the thickets
in thr