This only intensifies her wrath, and her curse provokes Enkidu to insult the goddess. His lament is one of the great poetic utterances of all time. Gilgamesh accepts the fact of death and commences his journey to Utnapishtim, the ancestral father, in search of the guerdon of immortality, for himself, and also that he might restore life to his friend. Gilgamesh is allowed to enter the Roadway of the Sun through an opening in the mountain. The terrors of perpetual night are overcome and he emerges to find Shamash, the Sun, in full splendor.
Darkness withdraws when there is enough light.
Not even the Sun-god could hold back one filled with the ardor of quest. Gilgamesh travels on, only to be halted near the sea where Siduri, the winemaker, lives. For her he recites once more his woeful tale. Even so, the ferryman is moved by the stranger's fate and decides to help him. He instructs him to cut 120 poles, each pole to be discarded after one use, for his hand must not touch the death-dealing water.