Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

346 to function as a characterization of Inanna rather than Lugalbanda. At first such a
reinterpretation may seem to disturb the narrative coherence of the passage, but in my
view it improves it markedly: whereas previous interpretations place Lugalbanda’s
entrance in the middle of a series of lines otherwise devoted to increasingly
circumscribed contextual descriptions of Inanna, in the reinterpretation offered here, lines
345 through 347 form a series of circumstantial clauses and epithets describing the
goddess Inanna, culminating with the description of her sitting on her cushion in line 348.
Line 349 then represents Lugalbanda’s formal entrance into her presence.
There are several others examples in which a phrase in the terminative case occurs
with a *mini-√ verb; the interpretation of these passages is quite difficult, but some of
them would seem to allow for an analysis in which they can be characterized as relative
clauses that refer to a causer rather than a causee as I suggest.
(24) The Death of Gilgamesh, segment F [1.8.1.3], ll. 180-183
(Kramer 1944; van Dijk 1967, 248-250; Wilcke 1970, 82-84; Klein 1990a, 64-65;
Jacobson 1980, 19-20, 23; George 1999, 195-208; Cavigneaux and al-Rawi 2000a;
Veldhuis 2001; George 2003, 14-17)
180. ≠si±.si.ig dumu d utu.[ke 4] Sisig (a god of dreams), the son of Utu,
181. ki.bi ku 3.ku 3.ga u 4.ße 3
mi.ni.in.≠œar± darkness,
221
the one who enlightens a place of