Fresh from his and Enkidu's victory over the monster Humbaba, guardian of the Cedar Forest, Gilgamesh washes and dresses himself in splendor, catching the eye of the goddess Ishtar, who proposes marriage and offers him wealth, a gold chariot, and the tribute of kings and countries in exchange. Gilgamesh refuses her in the bluntest possible terms, reciting a list of her previous lovers, mortal and animal alike, and the disasters that befell each of them, from Tammuz, condemned to yearly mourning, to a shepherd turned into a wolf and driven off by his own dogs, framing her proposal as an offer that has ruined everyone who ever accepted it.
Ishtar, humiliated before the assembled gods, goes to her father Anu and demands the Bull of Heaven to punish the insult, and when Anu objects that releasing the bull will bring seven years of famine to the land, she threatens to break open the gates of the underworld and let the dead outnumber and consume the living if he refuses her. Anu relents, and Ishtar leads the bull down to Uruk herself, where its first snort opens a chasm that swallows a hundred men, and its second swallows two hundred more, before Gilgamesh and Enkidu together move to bring it down.