Adapa

Summary

Adapa is the sage of the city of Eridu in Mesopotamian myth. Ea created him and made him a leader among men whose command none could oppose, and gave him wisdom but not eternal life. He baked bread with the bakers of Eridu, prepared the city's food and water every day, set the table with his clean hands, and steered the boat and fished for Eridu.

His story is told on a tablet found at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt. Adapa was fishing in the middle of the sea for his lord's house when the south wind blew and sank him, and in anger he said to it: I will break your wing! As he said it, the wing of the south wind broke, and for seven days it did not blow over the land. Anu asked his vizier Ilabrat: why has the south wind not blown for seven days? He answered: Adapa, son of Ea, has broken its wing. Anu rose from his throne and ordered Adapa to be brought. Ea, who knew the ways of heaven, told Adapa what to do: let his hair hang loose and put on mourning; at Anu's gate he would find Dumuzi and Gizzida, who would ask him whom he mourned, and he should answer: two gods who have vanished from our land, Dumuzi and Gizzida. They would look at each other and laugh, and speak a good word to Anu. Ea also told him: they will offer you the bread of death, do not eat; the water of death, do not drink; a garment, put it on; oil, anoint yourself. Adapa did as he was told, the two gatekeepers spoke for him, and Anu's heart was calmed. Anu said: why did Ea show a human the inner things of heaven and earth and give him a great heart? Since he has made him so, what shall we do with him? Bring him the bread of life, let him eat. They brought him the bread of life and he did not eat, the water of life and he did not drink, the garment and he put it on, the oil and he anointed himself. Anu laughed and said: come, Adapa, why did you not eat or drink? You shall not live. Adapa answered: Ea my lord told me, do not eat, do not drink. Anu said: take him and send him back to his earth.

The idea the story turns on is that humans were given knowledge but not everlasting life, and that obedience itself cost Adapa that life when it was offered. He is a sage who breaks the wind with a word, knows what to say at heaven's gate and comes out of Anu's anger unharmed, yet he obeys his master to the letter and refuses the bread that would have made him live for ever. The text does not say why Ea called the bread of life the bread of death, whether he feared for Adapa or wanted to keep him human. Rogers puts it this way: Adam lost immortality because he disobeyed, Adapa lost it because he obeyed. What humans kept from Adapa is wisdom: Ashurbanipal said he had learned "the craft of the sage Adapa", the arts of writing and learning.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. It is written a-da-ab, a-da-be and a-da-pa, so its letters are glottal stop, d and b: Arabic adab, the Babylonian essay's first reading. In Lisān al-ʿArab adab is the training of the self in praiseworthy qualities, and "the adab of study" is what a pupil owes his teacher. From the same root, adaba al-qawm is to invite people to one's meal, and the maʾduba is a banquet to which guests are invited. Both senses are in the story: Adapa the well-trained pupil who keeps his teacher Ea's instruction word for word, and the guest invited to Anu's table who would not eat, the same man who set Eridu's table with his own hands.

Linguistic Root

Adapa and adab

The spelling a-da-ab shows the b plainly, so the reading needs no change of letter; b and p alternate in cuneiform because one sign is read with either. Lane: addabahu, he trained him in the discipline of the mind and good qualities; the adīb is one well trained; and adab is so called because it invites people to praiseworthy qualities and forbids them evil ones. Then: adaba al-qawm, he invited the people to his meal; the ādib is one who invites to a meal; and the maʾduba is a banquet to which guests are invited. The root joins the invitation to the table and the training of the mind.

Other readings in the two essays

After adab the Babylonian and Sumerian essays both read Ādam, with b turned into m since both are lip sounds, and the Babylonian essay calls this reading "very striking and phonetically likely". Rogers had already written, early in the twentieth century, "Adapa, or perhaps Adamu". Lane gives Ādam as the father of mankind, and adīm al-arḍ as the visible face of the earth. But the spelling with b does not need the m, so Ādam is not a reading of the name's letters. It meets the name in meaning instead: a lexical list from Uruk glosses a-da-ab with Akkadian amēlu, "man", and Adam in Arabic and Hebrew is the name of the first man. The letters are those of adab, and the list makes its meaning "man", so the two readings join: adab in the sound, Adam in the image. The Babylonian essay also lists ʿataba, making Adapa "the one reproached", and calls it weak because it needs two letters changed.

Historical Context

The Adapa story survives on four fragments: three from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, and one from the archive of Amenhotep IV at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt, from the fourteenth century BCE. This last has small red-ink dots marking the word divisions, so it was used to teach the Babylonian language in Egypt. The essays make Adapa the first of the seven sages, the apkallū, whom Enki sent before the Flood to teach humankind. In the seventh century BCE Ashurbanipal says: "I learned the craft of the sage Adapa, the secret, hidden lore, all of the scribal arts. I am able to recognise celestial and terrestrial omens and can discuss them in an assembly of scholars." Rogers, pp. 67–68, Amarna tablet 356, Ashurbanipal 220, column i 13′.

Connections

Key Mythic Narratives

Servant of Eridu's table

The first fragment from Nineveh describes Adapa before the story begins: his command was like the command of Anu, Ea gave him "a wide ear" to reveal the destiny of the land, and he was the most prudent of the Anunnaki, clean of hands, anointed, a keeper of the divine statutes. Every day he closed the gate of Eridu, then boarded the boat at the pure quay, the quay of the new moon, and steered out onto the broad sea. The man who refused Anu's bread was the keeper of the temple's bread and water in his own city.

Symbolic Reading

The Babylonian essay reads Adapa as "the Semitic Adam", the first learned man who lost immortality, and sees in both stories the loss of immortality through a choice about food. In the text food appears at every stage: the bread of Eridu that Adapa bakes, the bread of death Ea warned him of, and the bread of life Anu offered. What decides his fate is not the bread itself but the word he heard from his teacher and kept.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Mesopotamia has three stories in which a human is offered what would make him live: Utnapishtim is given lasting life after the Flood, Gilgamesh takes the plant of youth and the snake eats it, and Adapa is offered the bread of life and refuses it. Enkidu eats bread and drinks beer and becomes human; Adapa refuses heaven's bread and remains human. The Greek essay compares Prometheus with Adapa: both stood before the gods with human knowledge and lost. Adam in the Bible and the Qur'an lost paradise by eating what was forbidden; Adapa lost immortality by declining what was permitted.

Adapa, who refused the bread of life so that people kept his learning without immortality, stands with Prometheus and Odin among the culture heroes who paid for what they brought.