ETANA AND THE EAGLE. 147 
with his body raised as if looking upward, as in those that were watching the man 
ascending on the eagle. Above the sheep is a man bending over, with his hands 
reaching downward toward some uncertain object, perhaps kneading bread, per- 
haps taking the contents of some vessel. Behind him are four jars. We can not 
doubt that the same story was in the mind of the engraver of this seal. 
These five cylinders which contain the man on the eagle, with these three 
others, are all known to me that seem to contain elements of what we may presume 
to be the Etana myth, as given in the texts first published by George Smith in his 
remarkable volume, “The Chaldean Genesis,’’ and since increased in number 
from the fragments published by Harper and Jastrow.* It is true that we have 
two Babylonian stories of an eagle carrying a man, as Ganymede was carried to 
heaven by an eagle in the Greek myth, which very likely had a Babylonian origin; 
but the story of Gilgamos borne as an infant by an eagle, as told by lian and not 
yet found in any Babylonian text, must be eliminated from the discussion of these 
cylinders, inasmuch as on one of them (fig. 394) the beard of the man on the eagle 
is clearly shown, and we can hardly suppose that the infant Gilgamos, or Gilgamesh, 
would be proleptically represented as a grown man. We are then, so far as the 
available known texts go, obliged to recognize in these seals various scenes in the 
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story of Etana, the strong man. ‘The tablets published are from the library of 
Assurbanipal and may represent a later version of the myth than that on these 
early seals, which are probably more than two thousand years older than the tablets. 
Of course the tablets may be copied from a much earlier text. Jastrow says that 
the three or four tablets on which the story of Etana is contained gave probably 
only a portion of the entire epic, and such seems to be the indication of the composi- 
tion on the seals. 
If we may venture to regard the scenes as representing various episodes in 
the story of Etana, we should imagine that, like Sargon the Elder, and Gilgamesh, 
and the biblical Moses, his life began in a humble and tragic way. Sargon was 
adopted by a water-carrier and Gilgamos by a gardener. Etana seem: as a child 
to be a waif, doubtless of high birth but exposed to death, who is seen surreptitiously 
seizing the cheese-cakes, or /eben-balls, set out to dry in the sun, or perhaps the 
loaves of bread, and it may be drinking from a milk-jar. He was very likely detected 
and adopted by the shepherds. Then he became himself a shepherd, drove his 
flocks in and out of the fold, and milked the goats and ate from the vessels in which 
the milk and other products were stored, and fed the shepherd dogs. Etana married, 
and the texts tell us that when his wife had difficulty with childbirth Etana was 
directed to seek, with the help of the eagle, the birth-plant which would enable 

*E. J. Harper, “ Beitrige zur Assyriologie,” 11, pp. 390-408; Morris Jastrow, Jr., 1b. 111, pp. 363-378. Also see Maspero, 
“Dawn of Civilization,” pp. 698-700;€ Jastrow, “ Religion of Babylonia,” pp. 519-528. 
