That's the kind of treatment I had from the time I was eight years old, and it didn't make any neverminds to the old man if I was so sick that I couldn't […]

I SMSed him and asked why he was late.

From the evidence of other witnesses to alliterative texts copied by Thornton (as, for instance, by comparing the four dissimilar manuscripts of Awntyrs or the two each of Truelove and The Palement of Thre Ages) it can be seen that, although Thornton is a careful scribe and almost never mismetres a line into duple, alternating rhythms, he shows an eagerness to smooth out and add explanatory pleonasms by inserting fillers such as ful, frequently supplying full forms where an aphetic one was metrical, and altering the metrical pattern of the b-verses to make triple-beat 'anapaestic' lines.

That Enkidu enters the city of Uruk wearing the garment of a priestess and that his adoption by Ninsun is linked to that of the hierodulic priestesses corroborates this interpretation.