e eagle, which in India, as has been
shown, was identified with the gods of fertility, fire, and death.
According to a legend related by Aelian,[204] "the guards of the
citadel of Babylon threw down to the ground a child who had been
conceived and brought forth in secret, and who afterwards became known
as Gilgamos". This appears to be another version of the Sargon-Tammuz
myth, and may also refer to the sacrifice of children to Melkarth and
Moloch, who were burned or slain "in the valleys under the clefts of
the rocks"[205] to ensure fertility and feed the corn god. Gilgamesh,
however, did not perish. "A keen-eyed eagle saw the child falling, and
before it touched the ground the bird flew under it and received it on
its back, and carried it away to a garden and laid it down gently."
Here we have, it would appear, Tammuz among the flowers, and Sargon,
the gardener, in the "Garden of Adonis". Mimic Adonis gardens were
cultivated by women. Corn, &c., was forced in pots and baskets, and
thrown, with an image of the god, into streams. "Ignorant people",
writes Professor Frazer, "suppose that by mimicking the effect which
they desire to produce they actually help to produce it: thus by
sprinkling water they make rain, by lighting a fire they make
sunshine, and so on."[206] Evidently Gilgamesh was a heroic form of
the god Tammuz, the slayer of the demons of winter and storm, who
passed one part of the year in the world and another in Hades (Chapter
VI).

Like Hercules, Gilgamesh figured chiefly in legendary narrative as a
mighty hero. He was apparently of great antiquity, so that it is
impossible to identify him with any forerunner of Sargon of Akkad, or
Alexander the Great. His exploits were depicted on cylinder seals of
the Sumerian period, and he is shown wrestling with a lion as Hercules
wrestled with the monstrous lion in the valley of Nemea. The story of
his adventures was narrated on twelve clay tablets, which were
preserved in the library of Ashur-banipal, the Assyrian emperor. In
the first tablet, which is badly mutilated, Gilgamesh is referred to
as the man who beheld the world, and had great wisdom because he
peered into the mysteries. He travelled to distant places, and was
informed regarding the flood and the primitive race which the gods
destroyed; he also obtained the plant of life, which his enemy, the
earth-lion, in the form of a serpent or well demon, afterwards carried
away.

Gilgamesh was associated with