ETANA AND THE EAGLE. 143 
body of a wild bull, and when the eagle, following the other birds, should attempt 
to feed on the body, to seize and kill him. The story tells us how the wise young 
eagle warned its parent against a possible trick, but in vain. The eagle looked 
carefully, saw that the other birds seemed to be in no danger, and after examination 
descended and began to eat, when it was seized by the serpent, its wings plucked, 
and it was left to die. 
The Storm-god Zu gives another form of the eagle-myths which were preva- 
lent among the old Babylonians. It violently seizes the tablets of fate held by the 
god Bel Enlil, while the god was pouring out the brilliant waters, a scene occasionally 
figured on the older cylinders, and flew away to a distant mountain. The meaning 
seems to be that the storms and clouds, represented by the bird, had, as the rainy 
season approached, got the victory over the sun, represented by Enlil. Anu is 
disturbed by the robbery of the tablets of fate, and all the gods are in consternation. 
One god after another is bidden to go and recover them, and finally Marduk (or 
perhaps Shamash) succeeds in recovering them and restoring the reign of the sun 
over the earth. 
Yet another story in which an eagle bears a part is the Adapa legend. Adapa, 
son of Ea, is fishing in the ocean when the South Wind attacks him under the form 
of a bird. Adapa catches the bird and breaks its wings. “Then when the South 
Wind ceased to blow, the gods were disturbed. Anu was enraged and demanded 
that his protector Ea should bring Adapa into his presence. The story tells how, 
instructed by Ea, Adapa mollified the anger of the gods, and how he failed, having 
visited heaven, to secure immortality. But with this part of the story we have 
here no immediate concern nor with the parallelism between the story of Adam 
and that of Gilgamesh in their loss of immortality. 
The eagle appears in various forms and relations on the cylinders. We have 
already seen him, in Chapter rv on “Archaic Cylinders,” sometimes with a lion’s 
head and sometimes with that of an eagle, seizing two animals ut its talons, 
and also as the eagle-symbol of the city of Lagash. We now turn to another 
scene with the eagle, that in which he appears bearing on his wings a man into the 
heavens. This we may assume to represent the upward flight of Etana to the 
heaven of Anu, rather than the rescue of the infant Gilgamos by the eagle as the 
child was thrown from the tower. 
The finest example with this design is seen in fig. 391. It was first published in 
de Sarzec’s ‘‘ Découvertes en Chaldée”’ (plate 30 bis, fig. 13) and is a large cylinder 
of shell, which is evidence of its antiquity. “The man, on whose face we seem to 
see a beard, sits astride the eagle, with his arms around its neck. Under the eagle 
are two seated dogs, gazing upward; between them is a large pail, or basket, with 
a handle by which to carry it. Behind each of the dogs stands a man in a short 
garment. One of them, who holds in one hand a pail, or basket, like that between 
the two dogs, is gazing up at the eagle, with his head bent back so as to bring his 
short beard to a horizontal position, and shades his eyes with his other hand: the 
other man carries a staff and has one hand lifted toward the eagle. It is evident 
that all this is one scene. A second scene shows us a wicker fence, with an opening, 
or gate, at the bottom, out of which a shepherd is leading his sheep and goats. The 
front one, which faces the other three and is being milked by a seated figure, is a 
goat. A third scene, in the upper part of the cylinder, appears to be domestic. The 
