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137 and if he fails, his heroism will be forever remembered: "Should I fall," he told Enkidu, " 'Gilgamesh against fierce Huwawa had fallen' they will say long after my offspring will be born." Determined to go, Gilgamesh prayed to Shamash, his god- ather and commander of the Eaglemen, for help and _protec- tion. "Let me go, O Shamash!" he intoned, "my hands are raised in prayer ... to the Landing Place give command ... establish over me your protection!" Receiving no favorable response, Gilgamesh revealed his plan to his mother, seeking her intercession with Shamash. "A far journey I have boldly undertaken," he said, "to the place of Huwawa; an uncertain battle I am about to face; unknown pathways I am about to tread. O my mother, pray thou to Shamash on my behalf!" Heeding her son's entreating, Ninsun donned the garb of a priestess, "a smoke-offering set up, and to Shamash raised her hands." "Why, having given me Gilgamesh for a son, with a restless heart didst thou endow him? And now thou didst affect him to go on a far journey, to the place of Hu- wawa, to face an uncertain battle." Give him your protection, she asked Shamash, "Until he reaches the Cedar Forest, until he has slain the fierce Huwawa, until the day mat he goes and returns." Turning to Enkidu, Ninsun announced that she had adopted him as a son, "though not from the same womb as Gilgamesh" he was, thus "putting an obligation on Enki- du's shoulders." Let Enkidu go in front, she told the com- rades, "for he who goes in front saves his comrade." And so, with newly made weapons, the comrades were off on their perilous journey to the Landing Place in the Cedar Mountains. The fourth tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh begins with the journey to the Cedar Mountains. Moving as fast as_ they could, the comrades "at twenty leagues ate their ration, at thirty leagues they stopped for the night," covering thus fifty leagues during a day. "The distance took them from the new moon to the full moon then three days more"—a total of seventeen days. "Then they came to Lebanon," in whose mountains the unique cedars of biblical fame have been growing. In Search of Immortality