The first tablet begins with the words that have been quoted above, “He who saw everything, [who] ... the land.” This is followed, it would seem, by a description of the hero, who, apparently, knew “the wisdom of the whole (of the lands?),” and “saw secret and hidden things.... He brought news of before the flood, went a distant road, and (suffered) dire fatigue (?).” All his journeyings and toils were, apparently, inscribed on tablets of stone, and records thus left for future ages. Gilgameš, as we learn in the course of the narrative, was lord or king of _Uruk supuri_, or “Erech the walled,” and at the time when the story begins, the fortifications were in a ruinous state, and the treasury (?) of the sanctuary Ê-anna, the temple of the goddess Ištar, which is mentioned in the legend immediately after, was, we may suppose, empty. Other details of the desolation of the temple are given, and the ruinous state of the walls of the city are spoken of, together with the decay of their foundations. No other fragment of Col. I. of the first tablet of the Legend of Gilgameš seems to have been recognized, so that the further references to the city are lost. An interesting piece that Mr. G. Smith thought to be part of the third column of this text refers to some misfortune that came upon the city when the people moaned like calves, and the maidens grieved like doves. “The gods of Erech the walled Turned to flies, and hummed in the streets; The winged bulls of Erech the walled Turned to mice, and went out through the holes.” The city was, on this occasion, besieged for three years, until at last the god Bêl and the goddess Ištar interested themselves in the state of things. As to who the enemy was who brought the people into such distress, there is no means at present of finding out, but Mr. G. Smith suggested, with at least some show of probability, that they were the Elamites under Ḫumbaba, who appears later as the opponent of our hero. The indifference of the gods and the divine bulls that were supposed to protect the city is well expressed in the statement that they respectively turned into flies and mice, buzzing about and active, but doing no good whatever.