The wife of Uta-Napishtim took pity on the sleeping hero and persuaded her husband to reveal the secret of immortality. They awoke Gilgamesh and told him of a prickly plant that lay at the bottom of the sea. Gilgamesh set off at once to find the plant, and when he came to the ocean edge he tied boulders to his feet and plunged in. He sank to the bottom, found and plucked the prickly plant, untied the boulders and swam to the surface with the precious plant. Gilgamesh went homeward with a high heart, for now he could confer everlasting life on himself and the people of Uruk. He crossed the waters of death, the garden of the goddess; he went through Mount Mashu and traveled eastward.
Within a few day's journey of home Gilgamesh laid the plant on a rock and dove into a small lake to bathe. And while he was swimming a snake approached the plant and ate it. Gilgamesh wept long and bitterly to think he had wasted his enormous effort to gain eternal life. The snakes would live forever, but human beings must die. Gilgamesh returned to Uruk with a broken heart. He knew what a miserable existence the dead lived in the netherworld, for Enkidu had revealed it to him. His only consolation was that the walls of Uruk would outlast him as monuments to Gilgamesh's reign.
