CHAPTER XXXIV 
THE LEGENDS OF ADAPA, AND OF THE FLOOD 
Ea (originally the primal deity of the Sumerian city of Eridu 
and eventually the god of the waters on and beneath the Earth) 
formed with Anu, the god of Heaven, and Enlil, the god of 
the Earth, from the earliest period the great triad at the head of 
the Babylonian pantheon. The representation of Ea took the 
form of a sea-monster with a body of a big fish, full of stars, 
and claws for the base of his feet.1 
Ea is ordinarily known from the pretty legend woven 
round his mortal son Adapa, and the command in obedience 
to which Adapa firmly but unconsciously made refusal of the 
gift of immortality. 
The latter, to supply his father’s household, went a-fishing 
in the sea one day—fish food was evidently not the ‘‘ abomina- 
tion ’’ to the Sumerian that it was to the Egyptian gods—but 
suddenly Shiitu the South Wind came on to blow, upset his 
sailing boat, and ducked him under the water, or, as Adapa 
puts it, “‘ made me descend to the house of my lord,” 2.e. 
Ea, god of the Sea.2_ In anger Adapa caught the South Wind 
and broke her wings. But for this assault he was haled to 
1 Cf. Langdon, op. cit., 72. Ea or “‘ Enki est généralement représenté sous 
la forme d’un animal ayant la téte, le cou, et les épaules d’un bélier, et qui 
rampe sur les pattes de devant: le reste du corps est celui d’un poisson.” 
2 See the Nippur Poem, op. cit., p. 84, note 3. 
3 From Karl Frank, Babylonische Beschwortunge Reliefs, p. 80. The South 
Wind was specially dreaded, because it caused destructive floods in the low- 
lying regions of the Euphrates valley. In Langdon’s Sumerian Epic of Paradise 
(op. cit., 1915), p. 41, we find that “ Adapa sailed to catch fish, the trade of Evidu,” 
a pretty and simple touch identifying the god with his worshippers, and his 
pursuit with their trade; and one which supports the theory that to the 
Babylonian his god, in early times, was a being very similar to himself, if more 
powerful. 
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