Culture Heroes: Bringers of Fire, Writing and Farming

Summary

Culture heroes are the figures who brought people what they live by: fire to cook and smelt with, signs to write and count with, the plough and the seed, the loom, the ship and the house, and the order by which work is shared out. Most of the stories say that these gifts were taken from a greater power, and that someone paid for them.

The oldest complete story of this kind is the Sumerian poem Inanna and Enki. Inanna comes from Uruk to Eridu, the city of Enki, who receives her in his house of fresh water with food and beer, and the two compete in drinking from bronze vessels. In his drunkenness he gives her the me one after another, the things a city stands on: the craft of the carpenter, the coppersmith and the scribe, the craft of the smith, the leather-worker, the fuller, the builder and the reed-worker, wisdom and attentiveness, the kindling of fire and the extinguishing of fire, and deceit as well. She loads them onto the Boat of Heaven and leaves. When Enki sobers he asks his minister Isimud where the me are, and is told he gave them to his daughter. Six times he sends pursuers to bring the boat back; each time Inanna answers that Enki's word cannot be revoked, and her minister Ninshubur drives them off, until she reaches Uruk and the city rejoices.

The best-known of these stories among the Greeks is that of Prometheus. Hesiod's Theogony says that at Mecone he divided the sacrifice of an ox between gods and men with a trick, so Zeus in anger withheld fire from humans, and Prometheus stole it and carried it to them in a hollow fennel stalk. Zeus bound him with unbreakable chains, set an eagle on him to eat his liver, and made for humans the woman with whom evils came out among them. In Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, Prometheus lists what he taught people: houses, the risings and settings of the stars, number, the combining of letters by which all things are held in memory, the yoking of beasts, ships, medicine, divination and the metals hidden under the earth, and ends: "every art possessed by man comes from Prometheus." Theogony 521–616; Prometheus Bound 436–471 and 472–506.

In China Fuxi looks at sky and earth and makes the eight trigrams from them, and knots cords into nets for hunting; then Shennong makes the plough and tastes the plants until he meets seventy poisons in a single day. In the North Odin leaves his eye as a pledge to drink from Mímir's well and hangs himself for nine nights to take up the runes. In Egypt Thoth writes for the gods; in Persia Jamshid teaches people to make weapons, spin and build; in Japan fire is born from the mother's body and kills her.

These stories agree that what people live by came from a hand with a name and a story, and that it was usually taken from a closed place: Enki's house, Zeus's fire, a well under the root of the world-tree, or the giant's mountain where the mead of poetry was hidden. They part on how it was taken: Inanna receives the me as a drunken gift, Prometheus steals fire, Odin buys wisdom with his eye and his body, while Fuxi takes from no one and makes the signs from what he sees. The idea they turn on is that the gift has a price that someone pays: Prometheus's chains and liver, Odin's eye and his hanging, the immortality Adapa refused, Shennong's poisons, the execution of Gun for stealing the god's soil, and the fall of Jamshid when he said all the work was his.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. The Greeks called what Prometheus brought τέχνη, tekhnē: his speech ends with πᾶσαι τέχναι, "all arts" come from Prometheus, and Hesiod calls his trick at Mecone δολίη τέχνη, "crafty art". In LSJ the word is art and cunning of hand, especially in metalwork, and then craft and wile. Taking off the ending -η leaves τεχν-, whose base is τεκ-, as in τέκτων, carpenter and builder. These are the letters of Arabic atqana: t is t, q becomes k because Greek has no q, and n is n. Lane gives atqana as making a thing firm, solid and free from defect by the exercise of skill, and tiqn as a skilful man, and the Qur'an speaks of God "who made everything firm", alladhī atqana kulla shayʾ. The art Prometheus gave is then itqān, sound workmanship, and the word holds skill and trickery together as his story does. What remains is that Greek counts the n as a suffix absent from τέκτων, while in Arabic it is a root letter. The Babylonians called the sages who taught people before the Flood apkallu, written ABGAL, "wise man, expert". The Babylonian essay reads it as ab and kull, "father of all", the all-knowing sage. Sumerian gal means "great" and is read in the name of Nergal as jalla, which gives "the great father", close to the essay's reading: the first teacher to whom every craft goes back.

Attestations by Culture

Sumer and Babylon: Enki and the sages

In Enki and the World Order, Enki organises the work of the land one task after another and puts each in someone's charge: he organises ploughs, yokes and teams, opens the furrows and sets Enkimdu, lord of ditches and dykes, over them; fills the fields with barley and sets Ashnan over it; fixes the string to the hoe, organises brick moulds and sets Kulla over them; lays foundations and bricks and sets Mušdama, Enlil's master builder, over them; perfects women's work with fibre and sets Uttu over it. Then Inanna comes to him weeping because he has given her no share.

In Akkadian, Ea created Adapa as the sage of Eridu and gave him wisdom but not lasting life. When Adapa was summoned before Anu, Ea told him not to eat the bread of death or drink the water of death; offered the bread and water of life, he refused them and was sent back to his earth. What people kept from him is learning: Ashurbanipal says he learned "the craft of the sage Adapa", the scribal arts. Adapa and the South Wind 1–70; Ashurbanipal 220, column i 13′. In the third century BCE Berossus, a Babylonian priest writing in Greek, told of a rational being named Oannes who came out of the sea at the edge of Babylonia, with the body of a fish, another head beneath the fish's head, and human feet. He spent the day among people without eating and taught them letters, numbers and every art, the founding of cities and temples, laws, land survey, seeds and harvests, and at sunset went back into the sea. Others like him came later, all of them, Berossus says, sent by Oannes. The Babylonian essay makes Adapa the first of these seven sages.

Egypt: Thoth and Osiris

For the Egyptians Thoth is the god of writing and wisdom and the scribe of the gods, and he could also be understood as the creator's mind and faculty of speech, by which things are named and come into being, which is why he is bound up with language and texts. Stadler, pp. 1 and 5. The story of his inventing writing is told by the Greek Plato in the Phaedrus, in the mouth of Socrates: he heard that an ancient god of Naucratis in Egypt, Theuth, invented number, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, draughts and dice, and above all letters, and showed them to King Thamus so that they might be taught to the Egyptians. The king answered that this invention would produce forgetfulness in those who learned it, because they would not exercise their memory; that it was a remedy for reminding, not for memory; and that it gave learners the appearance of wisdom, not wisdom itself.

In the papyrus of the Contendings of Horus and Set, Osiris writes from the land of the dead to the council of gods and reminds them that it was he who made barley and spelt. Contendings, pp. 24–26. That he taught the Egyptians farming and law is told by the Greek writer Plutarch in the Roman period, long after the Egyptian texts: his first act as king was to free the Egyptians from a destitute, beast-like way of life by showing them the fruits of cultivation, giving them laws and teaching them to honour the gods; then he travelled over the earth teaching its peoples, winning them with persuasive speech, song and music. When he came home, Set plotted against him.

Canaan: Kothar-wa-Khasis

Kothar-wa-Khasis is the craftsman of the gods at Ugarit, sought out at his distant home in Caphtor. He makes Baal the two clubs with which he defeats Yamm, casts silver and pours gold into furniture for Athirat, builds Baal's palace with timber that includes Lebanese cedar, and proposes a window through which Baal sends out his voice. A bow from his workshop reaches Danel, who gives it to his son Aqhat; Anat covets it, arranges Aqhat's death, and the bow is lost.

Greece and Rome: Prometheus, Hephaestus, Hermes and Vulcan

In Aeschylus's play Prometheus says that he stopped humans foreseeing their death, set blind hopes in their hearts and gave them fire, from which they would learn many arts. Prometheus Bound 248–256. At the opening of the play Power tells Hephaestus that Prometheus stole "your own flower, flashing fire, source of all arts" and gave it to mortals; Hephaestus says he lacks the heart to bind a kindred god, and then rivets him to the desolate crag because he is ordered to. Prometheus Bound 1–20. The owner of fire in heaven is the one who chains the god who took it to earth. Hephaestus is himself the gods' craftsman: he builds their houses, makes Achilles the shield showing earth, sky and sea, and shapes the first woman from clay at Zeus's order.

The Homeric Hymn to Hermes says that Hermes first invented fire-sticks and fire, and that he made the lyre from a tortoise's shell on the day he was born. In the same poem he is the thief of his brother's cattle, so inventor and trickster meet in him. Hymn 4.24–51 and 111. Among the Romans Vulcan makes the armour of Aeneas in his workshop beneath a smoking island, and Vitruvius advises building his temple outside the city walls so that the danger of fire stays away from houses.

The North: Odin

Odin came to Mímir's well under the root of the tree, in which wisdom and the wit of men are hidden, and was not given a drink until he laid his eye in pledge. Gylfaginning 15. In Hávamál he says that he hung nine nights on the windswept tree, wounded by a spear, given himself to himself, with neither bread nor drinking-horn, then peered down, took up the runes with a cry and fell back; then he learned nine mighty songs and drank of the precious mead poured from Óðrerir. Hávamál 138–140. The mead of poetry itself he took by a trick. It was made from the blood of the wise Kvasir mixed with honey, and the giant Suttungr hid it in a mountain guarded by his daughter Gunnlöð. Odin came under the name Bölverkr, "evil-doer", worked a whole summer for the giant's brother for the wage of one drink, bored into the mountain and crept in as a serpent, spent three nights with Gunnlöð, who allowed him three draughts with which he emptied the three vessels, and flew as an eagle to Asgard, where he spat the mead into the gods' vessels; poets drink from it. Skáldskaparmál 5–6. Hávamál then asks how anyone should trust his pledges, since he cheated Suttungr and left Gunnlöð weeping.

Persia: Jamshid

The Shahnameh says that Jamshid softened iron with the royal glory and made helmets, mail and swords over fifty years; over the next fifty he taught people to spin, weave and sew linen, silk and wool; then he divided them into four classes by their work; then he ordered the demons to mix earth and water into bricks, and built baths and palaces. He drew gems out of rock, sought perfumes and medicines, and built a ship to cross from land to land; the demons raised his throne into the sky, and the day was called "the new day". After seven hundred years he told the nobles that food, clothing, safety and healing had all come from him; the royal glory left him, the people scattered, Zahhak took the throne and later had him sawn in two.

China: the line of founders

The Xici appendix to the Book of Changes says that Fuxi looked at the images in the sky, the patterns on the earth and the markings of birds and beasts, made the eight trigrams, the bagua, and knotted cords into nets with which people hunted and fished. Then Shennong cut wood into a share and bent wood into a handle and taught the world to plough, and set up the market at midday. Then Huangdi, Yao and Shun let their robes hang down and the world was ordered, and after them came boats and oars, oxen and horses for hauling, pestle and mortar, bow and arrow, houses in place of caves, coffins for the dead, and written tallies, 書契, in place of knotted cords. The text derives each invention from one of the book's figures: the net is taken from the figure Lí, 離.

The Huainanzi says that Shennong taught people to sow the five grains, examined the land, and tasted every plant and the water of every spring so that people would know what to eat and what to avoid, and in one day met seventy poisons. Huainanzi, "Xiuwu". In another chapter it says that when Cangjie made writing, heaven rained millet and ghosts wailed at night, and when Boyi dug wells, dragons rose into the dark clouds; and it concludes that the more skill there is, the thinner virtue becomes.

In the Shanhaijing, Gun stole from the Supreme Ruler the soil that swells by itself and dammed the flood with it without waiting for permission; the Ruler had him killed and ordered his son Yu to spread the soil and settle the nine regions. The same chapter names the first maker of each thing: Fanyu first made boats, Jiguang first made carts of wood, Houji sowed the hundred grains, and his grandson Shujun first ploughed with oxen. Shanhaijing 18. The Shiji says that Yu opened channels for the water to the sea and stayed away from home for thirteen years, passing his own door without entering. Shiji, "Xia Annals". Nüwa smelts five-coloured stones to patch the sky and kneads yellow earth into people with her own hands.

Japan: the fire that kills its mother

No one steals fire in the Kojiki or the Nihon shoki. Izanami bears her last child, Kagutsuchi, the kami of fire; he burns her in the birth, metal kami come from her vomit and earth, water and growth kami from her excrement and urine, and she dies. Her husband Izanagi cuts off the son's head, and new kami arise from his blood on the rocks and on the sword, and mountain kami from his body. Kojiki, chapters 6–8. In one account in the Nihon shoki, Izanami, as she lies dying, bears the earth goddess Haniyama-hime and the water goddess Mizuha-no-me; Kagutsuchi takes the earth goddess as his wife, and their child Waka-musubi has the silkworm and the mulberry on the crown of the head and the five grains in the navel. Nihon shoki, Book I. Grain and silkworms also come out of the body of the food goddess after she is killed: by Susanoo in the Kojiki, by Tsukuyomi in the Nihon shoki, after which Amaterasu makes the grains seed for the fields and takes the silkworms in her mouth to reel thread.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The gifts fall into four groups: fire, signs and writing, food and water, and crafts and order. Here they are with their price:

The gift comes from one of four places. It may be taken from the house of a god who owns it: Inanna takes the me from a drunken Enki, Prometheus steals Zeus's fire, Odin takes the mead of poetry from the giant's mountain by deceit, and Gun steals the Supreme Ruler's soil. It may come from looking at the world: Fuxi looks at sky and earth, and the Xici derives each invention from one of the book's figures. It may come from trial in the body: Shennong tastes the plants and learns poison from medicine. Or it may come out of a body that dies: Japanese fire kills its mother, and grain comes out of the slain food goddess.

The price falls on one of three. The bringer pays: Prometheus's chains and liver, Odin's eye and his hanging, Shennong's poisons, Gun's execution, Yu's years away from home. Or the people who receive the gift pay: the woman with whom evils came, the forgetfulness that writing brings in Plato, the ghosts' wailing when writing was made in the Huainanzi, the immortality Adapa refused, so that people remained without it. Or the first owner pays: Enki loses the me, Suttungr loses his mead. The craftsmen who work for the gods, Kothar, Hephaestus and Vulcan, pay nothing for their craft and stand on the side of power: Hephaestus owns the fire Prometheus stole and is the one ordered to chain him, which he does against his will. Jamshid stands between the two: he gathered everyone's work, then fell when he called it his own.

The net shows how differently the gift can end. Fuxi knots cords into nets with which people hunt and fish. Loki, Snorri says, knots linen thread into meshes, the first net, then throws it in the fire as the gods come near; they recognise the device from its pattern in the ash and catch him with it. Gylfaginning 50. Greek joins craft and trick in the one word τέχνη: the trick at Mecone is a tekhnē, and so is the net in which Hephaestus caught Ares; the figures who changed the world by trickery are gathered in the Trickster.

The names of these figures, as their pages read them in the Arabic tongue, describe their work: Prometheus the mubrim, who settles a matter firmly before it happens; Hephaestus the nāfith, who blows on the fire; Kothar-wa-Khasis "the abundant, the perceptive"; Thoth the keeper, from ḥāṭa; Adapa from adab; Fuxi the opener, fattāḥ; Huangdi "the highest guide", from hudā; Jamshid "the great builder"; Odin the ear, udhun, who knows by what he hears; and Shennong "the maker of the sowing", a reading proposed on the method.

Symbolic Reading

The Greek essay reads the theft of fire as the discovery of kindling fire by friction, the greatest technical revolution in human history, with the "gods" from whom fire was stolen standing for the powers of nature. It reads Prometheus's punishment as the price of progress: the eagle eating his liver is the inventor's constant strain, and the liver that grows back at night is human endurance. It says that crediting every art to Prometheus compresses thousands of years of invention into one figure.

The Chinese essay says that the gods of China are engineers, kings and inventors, and matches each with an invention: Fuxi with hunting and herding, Nüwa with pottery, Shennong with farming and herbal medicine, Huangdi with bronze and weaving, Cangjie with writing, whose four eyes in the story it reads as careful observation. The Sumerian essay reads Enki as applied knowledge, the me as the protocols of civilization, and Inanna's taking them as the shift of the centre of civilization from Eridu to Uruk. The Persian essay reads Jamshid's achievements as the history of the farming and metal revolutions compressed into a myth. The Norse essay reads Odin as the figure of the seeking sage, and says the runes came as the fruit of suffering and long reflection, not as a gift from heaven. The Canaanite essay reads Kothar-wa-Khasis as the class of craftsmen, says that kings themselves need the craftsman, and takes his home in Caphtor as an admission that some crafts came from the Aegean. The Egyptian essay reads Osiris's just rule and teaching of agriculture as the season of sowing and harvest, relying on the late account. The Japanese essay reads Izanami's death in giving birth to fire as a volcano coming out of the land and destroying it. The Babylonian essay compares the seven sages with the prophets and with Prometheus, teacher of humans, and compares Adapa with Prometheus in knowledge and punishment; the second Chinese essay makes Fuxi, Prometheus and Enki "the god who gives knowledge to humans".

The texts support this reading in two ways. First, the lists of gifts are lists of the work of a settled society: field, hearth, forge, loom, scribe, ship, market and law appear in nearly all of Enki and the World Order, the Xici, the Shahnameh and Prometheus Bound, and each text gives each task an owner. Second, the prices are things people know from their own lives: a plant known by tasting poisons whoever tastes it first, water work takes the worker away from home for years, writing weakens memory, fire burns the one who kindles it, and a craft gathered into one king's hand is claimed as his own. The dates the essays propose for each invention are not in the texts; what the texts keep is the order of the work and its price.