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.
Variant accounts
- Adapa is widely identified with Uanna, the first of the seven antediluvian sages, whom Berossus calls Oannes.The apkallu tradition names Uanna as the first sage sent up from the Apsu to teach humanity, and the compound form Uan-Adapa appears in the lists, which is the basis for the identification. It is standard but not unanimous, and the Adapa myth itself does not make the equation.Reference treatments of Adapa and of the apkallu tradition, on the identification of Adapa with Uanna/Oannes, the first of the seven sages. (secondary)
Domains
- wisdom
Relations
- student of: EnkiEa's man in every sense — given his wisdom, serving his temple at Eridu, and destroyed by taking his advice literally at the one moment when the advice was wrong or was meant to be.The myth of Adapa: Ea gives him wisdom, and instructs him how to behave before Anu and what not to accept there. (primary)
Sources
- Adapa is the sage and priest of Ea at Eridu who broke the wing of the south wind, was summoned before Anu, and on Ea's instruction refused the bread and water of life, forfeiting immortality.: 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. (primary); Reference treatment of Adapa: sage of Eridu, priest of Ea, the south wind, the refusal of the food of life. (secondary)