Adapa

Adapa is why people die, in one of the Mesopotamian accounts. He is Ea's sage at Eridu, given wisdom and not life — the text says so plainly, and the whole myth turns on the difference. The south wind capsizes his fishing boat and he breaks its wing in temper, the wind stops for seven days, and Anu summons him. Ea coaches him: win over the gatekeepers Dumuzi and Gishzida, and do not eat or drink what is offered, because it will kill you. What is offered is the bread and water of life. He refuses, and Anu laughs, or is exasperated, depending on the reading, and sends him back down mortal. Whether Ea meant to save him from an execution he expected, or to keep a human out of the immortals, or simply got it wrong, is an argument as old as the tablet.

Domains

• wisdom

Relations

• student of: Enki

Sources

• The Akkadian myth of Adapa (Adapa and the Food of Life), known from fragments of about the seventeenth century BCE and from the Amarna archive.
• Reference treatment of Adapa: sage of Eridu, priest of Ea, the south wind, the refusal of the food of life.