The Food of Immortality

Summary

The food of immortality is the story of the food or drink that keeps whoever takes it alive and undying: who owns it, who guards it, and which human comes near it and then loses it. Its oldest complete telling to survive in writing is a tablet from Tell el-Amarna in Egypt, of the fourteenth century BCE, with the story of Adapa, the sage of Eridu who broke the wing of the south wind and was summoned to Anu in heaven. Ea had warned him: they will offer you the bread of death, do not eat; the water of death, do not drink. When the two gatekeepers of heaven spoke for him, Anu said: bring him the bread of life, let him eat. They brought it and he did not eat, the water of life and he did not drink. Anu laughed and said: why did you not eat or drink? You shall not live; and he sent him back to his earth.

In the eleventh tablet of the epic of Gilgamesh the wife of Utnapishtim asks her husband: Gilgamesh came here and toiled; what will you give him as he goes back to his land? So he discloses a secret of the gods: a plant like box-thorn, with thorns, by which a man gains his life. Gilgamesh ties heavy stones to his feet that drag him down to the Apsu, pulls up the plant and cuts the stones loose. He tells the boatman Urshanabi: this is "the plant of the heartbeat", by which a man recaptures his vitality; I will take it to Uruk and feed some to an old man, and if the old man grows young I will eat some and go back to how I was in my youth. On the way he sees a pool of cool water and goes down to bathe; a snake smells the fragrance of the plant, comes up silently and carries it off, and as it turns away it sloughs its skin. Gilgamesh sits down and weeps.

The story recurs in many mythologies. In the Rigveda the singers say: "We have drunk Soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the gods discovered." In the Mahābhārata the gods and their rivals churn the ocean with a mountain and a serpent until the drink of immortality, amṛta, comes out, and Viṣṇu takes it in the form of a bewitching woman and gives it to the gods, as told in the churning of the ocean; then Garuḍa carries it from heaven as the price of his mother's freedom and does not drink of it. In Iran Haoma tells Zarathustra: I am Haoma who drives death away; at the bottom of the sea grows the White Haoma that makes whoever eats it immortal, and from it the drink of all people is made at Frashokereti. Among the Greeks the gods eat no bread and drink no wine, so there is no blood in them, and that is why they are called immortals; their food is ambrosia and their drink nectar, and Tantalus steals both and is punished. In the North Iðunn keeps apples that the gods bite when they grow old, and they become young again. In China the Queen Mother of the West owns "the drug of not dying"; the archer Yi asks her for it, and his wife Chang'e steals it and flees with it to the moon. In the Hebrew Bible Adam is put out of the garden lest he eat of the tree of life and live for ever, and in the Qur'an Satan promises him "the tree of perpetuity".

The idea these stories turn on is that immortality is eaten and drunk, and that it is in hands other than man's. The gods are deathless because they eat a food people do not eat, as the Iliad says, and when the food is taken from them they age: when Iðunn and her apples were carried off, the gods grew grey and old. Man comes near this food and then loses it, and the road to the loss differs. Adapa refuses it out of obedience to his teacher; Gilgamesh wins it and the snake takes it while he bathes; Tantalus steals it and is punished; Chang'e steals it, escapes death and is exiled to the moon; Rāhu drinks it until it reaches his throat and his head is cut off, so that the head lives and the body is dead; Garuḍa carries it without tasting it and is given immortality without drinking. Two things recur. The snake wins what man lost: Gilgamesh's snake sloughs its skin and is renewed, and the serpents of India lick the grass on which the drink was set, and their tongues are split. And the old man becomes young: Gilgamesh wanted to test the plant on an old man, and the Aśvins made the sage Cyavana young again. The languages call this food by words for medicine: "plant" in Akkadian, "drug" in Chinese, "the remedy against old age" among the Norse poets, and the Sanskrit and Greek dictionaries also give its two names the sense of an antidote to poison.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The story has no single name, but its key words in Akkadian can be read in Arabic letter by letter. Ea tells Adapa not to eat akal mūti nor drink mê mūti: Arabic akl al-mawt and māʾ al-mawt, "the food of death" and "the water of death". Gilgamesh wants to see whether šību iṣṣaḫir: šību is "old man", Arabic ashyab, the hoary one, from shāba, to grow white-haired; and ṣeḫēru is "to become small, young", Arabic ṣaghura. So on Gilgamesh's lips the plant is what makes the hoary man young. The food of the Greek gods, ἀμβροσία, ambrosia, the project's Greek essay reads from Arabic ʿamara, to live long: the drink of long life. Greek grammarians divide it into a negation and mbrot-, "mortal", whose letters after the negation are m, r and t, the letters of mart with which the page of the Amesha Spentas reads the Avestan name of immortality. And Arabic calls the tree promised to Adam shajarat al-khuld, "the tree of perpetuity"; khuld in Lane is remaining for ever, without end.

Linguistic Root

The Mesopotamian words

The Adapa text says, in lines 29 and 30, a-ka-la ša mu-ti and me-e mu-ú-ti, and in lines 60 to 62 a-ka-al ba-la-ṭi and me-e ba-la-ṭi. BDB gives Hebrew ʾākal, to eat, with Akkadian akālu and Arabic akala, and Hebrew māwet, death, as Akkadian mūtu is death in the electronic Babylonian Library. So Ea's two warnings, "do not eat the bread of death, do not drink the water of death", stand in Arabic in their own letters. Balāṭu, life, has no Arabic word in its letters; the Akkadian dictionary notes that the "plant of life" is named with it.

In the epic, at lines 298 to 300, the hero says lūšakil šībam-ma, "I will feed an old man", and then šumma šību iṣṣahir amēlu. Earlier translators, Kovacs among them, read the last three words as the plant's name, "The Old Man Becomes a Young Man"; the electronic Babylonian Library edition reads them as a condition, "if the old man grows young". Either way the two words are the old man and youth. The Akkadian dictionary gives šību as old, elder and witness, and BDB gives Hebrew śîb, to be hoary, with Akkadian šêbu, aged man, and Arabic shāba. In Lane shāba is to become white-haired, and shāba raʾsuhu, his head became white. The Akkadian dictionary gives ṣehēru as to become small or young, and BDB, under Hebrew ṣāʿar, to be small and insignificant, sets beside it Assyrian ṣeḫêru, "be small", and the Arabic word. In Lane ṣaghura is the contrary of growing great, and is said of a child before puberty. The project's table of sound changes says that Semitic ġ merges with ʿ in Hebrew, which is what ṣāʿar shows, and that it disappears in Akkadian; here Akkadian writes it as ḫ, a place where the witness departs from the table.

The epic calls what the plant restores napištu, throat and life, which is Arabic nafs, as the second part of Utnapishtim's name is read under the flood myth. It calls the skin the snake throws off quliptu, which the Akkadian dictionary gives as the scaly skin of fish and snake and the bark of trees, husk of grain and cortex of reed, from the verb qalāpu. In Lisān al-ʿArab, qalafa al-shajara is to strip a tree of its bark, and qilf is bark or peel. So the snake in the story casts off its qilf, as a tree is peeled.

Ambrosia and nectar

The project's Greek essay reads ἀμβροσία, ambrosia, from Arabic ʿamara, calls it "the drink of long life", and sets it beside Gilgamesh's plant, the water of life and soma. In Lane ʿamira is to live, or continue in life, long. The letters meet: ʿayn drops in Greek and becomes a vowel at the start of the word, as the Juthoor table says; m is m and r is r; and the b between them is a sound Greek develops between m and r, as Smyth's grammar states, citing μεσημβρία, midday. LSJ divides the word differently: ἄμβροτος, immortal, is a negation and βροτός, mortal, which stands for μροτός and answers Sanskrit mṛtás, dead. On the Greek division the word means "what is not dead"; on the essay's reading, "what lengthens life". The two readings meet in m and r and part at the first vowel, which for the essay is the ʿayn of ʿamara and for the grammarians a negation. The t after the r remains, absent from ʿamara and present in mart, with which the page of the Amesha Spentas reads the Avestan name of immortality, amərətāt: a negation, then m, r and t. LSJ gives ambrosia as immortality, the food of the gods, perfume and unguent, and an antidote in medicine.

Νέκταρ, nectar, we read on the method, since the essay does not read it. Its letters are n, k, t and r; Greek k answers Arabic q and Greek t answers ṭ in the Juthoor table, so they are the letters of n-q-ṭ and q-ṭ-r overlapping. In Lane qaṭara al-māʾ is "the water dripped, fell in drops", qaṭṭara thawbahu is to fumigate a garment with quṭr, aloes-wood, and "he gave him a nuqṭa of honey" is a drop of it. And in the Iliad nectar is dripped: Thetis puts ambrosia and red nectar into Patroclus's nostrils, and the verb in the Greek text is στάξε, she dripped, so that his flesh should not decay; Athena drips them into Achilles' breast. It is a reading proposed on the method that joins two roots in one word, and Greek has no verb in these letters meaning to drip.

Medicine and poison

Monier-Williams gives Sanskrit amṛta as "not dead", immortal, and the nectar produced at the churning of the ocean, and among its senses "antidote against poison", a medicament, medicine in general, and, from the lexicographers, poison. The Akkadian dictionary gives šammu as plant, grass, herb, a medicinal herb, and a herbal infusion to be drunk. The project's Hindu essay reads the name Soma as Arabic samm, saying that in Arabic the word holds both poison and drug, and that the Vedic drink is mysterious between the two. In Lane samm is a deadly thing, poison, the venom of the serpent. So in these languages one word names the plant that heals, the drink that gives life and the poison that kills, as in India the poison and the amṛta come out of one churning. In China the food of immortality is called 藥, yào, "drug", and in the North the poets call Iðunn's apples the gods' remedy against old age.

Attestations by Culture

Mesopotamia: the bread refused and the plant stolen

The Adapa text says that Ea created him and made him a leader among men, gave him wisdom and did not give him eternal life, and that he baked bread with the bakers of Eridu and set the city's table. So the one who sets the table every day is invited to heaven's table and does not eat from it. The text does not say why Ea called the bread of life the bread of death. Rogers puts it this way: Adam lost immortality because he disobeyed, Adapa because he obeyed. In the epic of Gilgamesh a wife asks her husband what he will give the weary guest, so the plant is a parting gift that nearly made up to Gilgamesh for the immortality he was not granted. Before it, Utnapishtim had tested him by asking him to stay awake six days and seven nights, and he slept; he lost the first test to sleep and the plant while bathing.

India: soma and amṛta

In the hymns soma is a plant that is pressed and a drink that is drunk, and after drinking it the singer says: we have become immortal, we have attained the light. The Mahābhārata then makes the drink of immortality something drawn out of the ocean by churning, and tells who came out of it, who took it by a trick and who stole a drop, as told on the churning of the ocean. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa tells that the gods excluded the Aśvins from the soma because they had mixed with men, healing them; they came to the sage Cyavana, a decrepit old man, took him down to a pool, and he came out at whatever age he wished; he told them what they lacked, and they asked for their share of the sacrifice and were given the Āśvina cup of soma.

Iran: the White Haoma

Haoma appears to Zarathustra in Yasna 9 and says: I am Haoma the righteous, who drives death away; press me for drinking. The Bundahishn says that the White Haoma grows at the bottom of the wide ocean, that whoever eats it becomes immortal, and that Ahriman sent a lizard to spoil it, so ten fish guard it. At the end of time Saoshyant slaughters the ox Hadhayosh and from its fat and the White Haoma makes a drink that he gives to all people, and they become immortal. So in Iran the drink of immortality is held back to the end, and then given to everyone.

Greece: a food men do not eat

When Diomedes wounds Aphrodite, ichor flows from her, the blood of the gods, "for they eat not bread neither drink flaming wine, wherefore they are bloodless, and are called immortals". Calypso sets before Odysseus the food of mortals and before herself ambrosia and nectar at one table, then offers to keep him and make him immortal, and he chooses his home. Zeus feeds the Hundred-Handers nectar and ambrosia, and their strength returns before the war with the Titans. Pindar says the gods made Tantalus immortal with nectar and ambrosia; he could not digest his prosperity, stole them and gave them to his drinking companions, so the Father hung a stone over him, and the gods sent his son back to the short-lived race of men. Eos asks Zeus that her lover Tithonus be deathless and live for ever, and he grants it; it does not occur to her to ask youth for him and to strip him of the slough of deadly age, so she feeds him food and ambrosia while he ages, until he cannot move his limbs and she shuts him in his chamber; and Aphrodite tells Anchises: I would not have you deathless in that way. So for the Greeks immortality without youth is an old age without end.

The North: Iðunn's apples

Iðunn, wife of Bragi, keeps in a casket the apples the gods bite when they grow old, and they become young again, "and so it shall be until Ragnarök". When Loki was forced to bring her out of Asgard, the giant Þjazi seized her in the shape of an eagle, and the gods grew grey and old, until Loki brought her back as a nut carried by a falcon. So in the North the gods' youth is in a woman's hand, and it lasts only to the end of time.

China: the drug of not dying

The Shanhaijing says that on Mount Kunlun stands the tree of not dying, and that six shamans surround the corpse of Yayu, "all holding the drug of not dying to ward off" death. The Huainanzi says: Yi asked the Queen Mother of the West for the drug of not dying, Heng'e stole it and fled to the moon, and he grieved and had nothing to replace it, because he did not know where the drug grows; so begging for fire is not as good as owning a fire-drill, and borrowing water is not as good as digging a well.

The Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an

After Adam and Eve eat of the tree of knowledge, Genesis says: "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever", and he is sent out of the garden. In the Qur'an Satan whispers to Adam: "Shall I lead you to the tree of perpetuity and a kingdom that does not decay?", and says to them both: "Your Lord forbade you this tree only lest you become angels or become of the immortals." In the Qur'an the tree is a false promise of immortality; in Genesis the tree of life is another tree, from which man is kept.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In most versions the food of immortality rests on a tree, a plant or a water in a far place: Gilgamesh's plant in the Apsu under the water, the White Haoma at the bottom of the ocean, the tree of not dying on Kunlun, the tree of life in the garden. These are forms of the world tree and of the sacred mountain on which the undying tree stands. In India the drink is drawn out of the ocean, in Iran fish guard it in the water, in Mesopotamia it is won from the Apsu, the water of the primordial waters.

A thief and a deceiver stand in the stories: Loki takes Iðunn out of Asgard and brings her back, Viṣṇu takes the drink in the form of a woman, Indra takes it from the serpents while they bathe, Chang'e steals it from her husband. These are forms of the trickster. In the North Odin takes the mead of poetry by a trick from the mountain where Suttungr hid it, and that mead was made from the blood of Kvasir, the man the gods made from the spittle of the peace between them and their rivals, as in India the drink of immortality came out of a truce between the gods and their rivals.

The snake in these stories is man's rival for life. Gilgamesh's snake takes the plant and is renewed, the serpents of India lick the grass of the drink, Níðhöggr gnaws at the root of the world tree in the North, and fish guard the haoma from Ahriman's lizard. The old man made young joins Gilgamesh, Iðunn and the Aśvins: the plant is to be tested on an old man, the apples restore the grey gods, the pool restores Cyavana. At the Iranian end of time the drink is given to all people, in Frashokereti; in the North the apples keep the gods until Ragnarök and do not save them from dying there.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Babylonian myths reads Gilgamesh's journey as the first recorded voyage of exploration, the plant of youth as a medicinal plant, perhaps pearl of the Gulf or a seaweed, and the snake's theft as the loss of knowledge; it notes that the epic ends with Gilgamesh looking at the wall of Uruk, so that for the essay immortality lies in what a man builds and not in his body. The essay rereading the Indian myths reads the churning of the ocean as a chemical extraction and amṛta as the useful product that comes out at its end, perhaps soma or haoma, a fermented drink or a plant once thought to give immortality. The Babylonian essay sets Adapa beside Adam, the first man who lost immortality, and beside Prometheus.

The texts themselves hold both readings. The food in most of them is a plant or a plant's juice: a plant to be fed to an old man, a twig to be pressed, apples, a drug. The words that name it are words for medicine and poison in Akkadian, Sanskrit, Greek and Arabic. Yet the stories leave the food itself in the hands of the gods, and give man something else to keep: wisdom to Adapa, the wall to Gilgamesh, his home to Odysseus.