Talk:Enkidu/@comment-34162472-20170817042430/@comment-32879369-20170826172441

Pronounce as you wish, since both are wrong. Sumerian non-phonetic logograms had different pronunciations for the same symbols, in many cases, there are variant readings, the same name being written phonetically (in whole or in part) in one instance, and logographically in another. "The writing with dúg, pronounced dú, also shows that the sign dú as the third element in the form which the name has in the Assyrian version is to be read dú and that former readings like Ea-bani must be definitely abandoned.The form with dú is clearly a phonetic writing of the Sumerian name, the sign dú being chosen to indicate the pronunciation (not the ideograph) of the third element dúg. This is confirmed by the writing En-gi-dú in the syllabary CT XVIII, 30, 10. The phonetic writing is, therefore, a warning against any endeavor to read the name by an Akkadian transliteration of the signs. This would not of itself prove that Enkidu is of Sumerian origin, for it might well be that the writing En-ki-dú is an endeavor to give a Sumerian aspect to a name that may have been foreign The element dúg corresponds to the Semitic tabu, good," and En-ki being originally a designation of ord of the land," which would be the Sumerian a deity as the manner of indicating a Semitic Baal, it is not at all impossible that En-ki-dúg may be the "Sumerianized" form of a Semitic tâbu "Baal is good." It will be recalled that in the third column of the Yale tablet, Enkidu speaks of himself in his earlier period while still cattle, as wandering into the cedar forest of Huwawa, ving w while in another passage (ll. 252-253) he is described as "acquainted with the way to the entrance of the forest." This would clearly point to the West as the original home of Enkidu. We are thus led once more to Amurru taken as a general designation of the West as playing an important role in the Gilgamesh Epic If Gilgamesh's expedition against Huwawa of the Lebanon district recalls a Babylonian campaign against Amurru, Enkidu's coming from his home, where, as we read repeatedly in the Assyrian version, "He ate herbs with the gazelles Drank out of a trough with cattle"". (The Epic of Gilgamesh - Old Babylonian and Standard versions (Illustrated) R. Campbell Thompson,Delphi Classics).