Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

XL INTRODUCTION.
its turn, have acquired it through some Semitic
language. There is Httle doubt that the story was
also fastened on to Gilgamish, a famous Accadian
and Assyrian hero, even as it was fastened on to
Alexander, and probably, if we had all the evidence
we should find that it was told of some other hero
who lived long before Etanna;' in fact it seems
as if we had here one of the stories with Avhich
men amused themselves in a primitive period.
Its existence in the legends of Alexander is an-
other proof of the marvellous manner in which
history and stories are preserved in the East where
none of these things ever seems to have had a
beginning.
Travels of Wc havc mentioned above the name of the
anr^GHga- hero Gilgamish, whose travels and fabulous history
mish com- ^j.g recorded on the clay tablets of Assur-bani-pal's
pared. -^ JT
library,'' and it can be shewn that the legends
which had clustered round him were laid under
contribution for the history of Alexander. Gilgamish
fell sick and sought out the saofe Atrahasis to ask
The water him liow he might obtain eternal life,^ and Alexander's
constant quest was the well of the "Water
"of Life" (p. 261). The mountain through which
' Whom Aelian (JVa/. Animal., xii. zi), identifies with
Gilgamish.
" For the cuneiform texts see Haupt, Das Babylonisch^
Nimrodepos, Leipzig, 1S84; and for translations see Smith,
Chaldean Genesis, London, 1S76 (German translation by De-
litzsch, Leipzig, 1876).
3 Meissner, Alexander tend Gilgamos, p. 13.