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140 tried to open it. An unseen force threw him back, and for twelve days he lay paralyzed. The narrative reveals that En- kidu rubbed himself with plants, creating a "double mantle of radiance" mat made "paralysis leave the arms, impotence leave the loins." While Enkidu was lying immobilized, Gilgamesh made a discovery: he found a tunnel that led into the forest. Its en- trance was overgrown with trees and bushes and it was blocked by rocks and soil. "While Gilgamesh cut down the trees, Enkidu dug up" the rocks and soil. After a while they found themselves inside the forest, and saw ahead a path—the path "where Huwawa made tracks as he went to and fro." For a while the comrades stood awestruck. Motionless "they beheld the Cedar Mountain, the dwelling place of the gods, shrine-place of Inanna." They "gazed and gazed at the height of the cedars, gazed and gazed at the pathway into the forest. The path was well trodden, the road was excellent. The cedars held up their luxuriance all upon the mountain, their shade was pleasant; it filled one with happiness." Just as the two were feeling so good, terror struck: "Hu- wawa made his voice heard." Somehow alerted to the pres- ence of the two inside the forest, Huwawa's voice boomed death and doom for the intruders. In a scene that brings to mind the much later encounter between the boy David and the giant Goliath, when the latter felt insulted by the uneven match and threatened to "give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field," so did Huwawa belittle and threaten the twosome: "You are so very small that I regard you as a turtle and a tortoise," his voice announced; "were I to swallow you, I would not satisfy my stomach .. . So I shall bite your windpipe and neck, Gilgamesh, and leave your body for the birds of the forest and for the roaring beasts." Seized with fear, the comrades now saw the monster ap- pear. He was "mighty, his teeth as the teeth of a dragon, his face the face of a lion, his coming like the onrushing floodwaters." From his forehead there emanated a "radiant beam; it devoured trees and bushes." From this weapon's "killing force, none could escape." A Sumerian cylinder seal DIVINE ENCOUNTERS