Etana

Etana's problem is that he has no son, which in a king list is the only problem there is. The legend attaches it to a fable: an eagle and a serpent swear friendship before Shamash and share their food, the eagle eats the serpent's young anyway, and the serpent traps it in a pit to starve. Etana feeds the eagle and it takes him on its back toward the heaven of Anu to find the plant of birth, and in the best-known passage he looks down and watches the land shrink to a garden plot and the sea to a bread-basket. The King List, independently, calls him 'the shepherd, who ascended to heaven' and gives him a son, Balih, which suggests the flight worked. Balih is added in this same pass, so the flight has its result recorded as an edge.

Children

• Balih

Domains

• sovereignty

Relations

• father of: BalihThe son the whole legend is about: Etana goes up on the eagle to find the plant of birth, and the king list records that Balih followed him on the throne.Sumerian King List: Etana is succeeded by his son Balih. (primary)

Sources

• Etana is the shepherd-king of Kish in the Sumerian King List, said to have ascended to heaven, and the hero of a Babylonian legend in which an eagle he rescues from a pit carries him toward heaven in search of the plant of birth.: Sumerian King List. (primary); Reference treatment of Etana: thirteenth king of the first dynasty of Kish, the eagle and the serpent, the plant of birth, and his son Balih. (secondary)