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135 my companions were kissing its feet. I was drawn to it as to a woman; I placed it at your feet; you made it vie with me. "That which was coming toward you from the heavens," Ninsun told Gilgamesh, is a rival: "A stout comrade who rescues a friend is come to thee." He will wrestle you with his might, but he will never forsake you. Gilgamesh then had a second omen-dream. "On the ram- parts of Uruk were lay an axe." The populace was gathered around it. After some difficulty Gilgamesh managed to bring the axe to his mother, and she made him vie with it. Again Ninsun interpreted the dream: "The copper axe that you saw is a man," one equal to you in strength. "A strong partner will come to you, one who can save the life of a comrade." He was created on the steppe, and he will soon arrive in Uruk. Accepting the omens, Gilgamesh said: "Let it fall then, according to the will of Enlil." And then, one night, as Gilgamesh went out to have his sexual joys, Enkidu barred his way and would not allow Gilgamesh to enter the house where newlyweds were about to go to bed. A struggle ensued; "they grappled each other, holding fast like bulls." Walls shook, doorposts shattered as the two wrestled. At last, "Gilgamesh bent the knee." He lost the match to a stranger, and "bitterly he was weeping.” Enkidu stood perplexed. Then "the wise mother of Gil- gamesh spoke" to both of them: it was all meant to be, and from now on the two were to be comrades, with '‘Enkidu acting as the protector of Gilgamesh. Foreseeing future dan- gers—for well she knew that there was more to the dream- omen than she had told Gilgamesh—she beseeched Enkidu always to go ahead of Gilgamesh and be a shield unto him. As the two settled into a friendship, Gilgamesh began to tell his comrade of his troubled heart. Recalling his first omen-dream, the "something from the heaven" was now described by him as "the handiwork of Anu," an object that became embedded in the ground as it fell from the skies. When he was finally able to dislodge it, it was because the strongmen of Uruk "grabbed its lower part" as he, Gil- In Search of Immortality