Myth of Adapa

Akkadian mythological narrative (*Adapa and the South Wind*), known primarily from a fourteenth-century BCE tablet excavated in the Egyptian royal diplomatic archives at Tell el-Amarna (EA 356) alongside seventh-century BCE fragments from the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (plus a Middle Babylonian Sumerian version from Tell Haddad). It tells how Adapa, the blameless priest and first of the seven antediluvian sages (apkallu) of Eridu endowed with superhuman wisdom by Ea (Enki), breaks the wing of the South Wind after it capsizes his fishing boat and is summoned to the Heaven of An (Anu).

Core Themes

• Counsel of Ea: Adapa dresses in mourning for the two vanished gods Dumuzi and Ningishzida guarding Anu's gate, winning their intercession before An.
• Refusal of the "bread of life" and "water of life": obeying Ea's warning not to eat or drink what he believes to be the food of death, Adapa declines Anu's offering and forfeits immortality for himself and humankind.
• Etiology of human mortality alongside the priestly exorcistic privileges granted to Eridu.

Primary Text & Editions

• Untranslated Akkadian (cuneiform & transliteration): Amarna Tablet EA 356 (Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin VAT 348 / P270865) on CDLI; eBL Corpus — Nineveh Adapa Fragments
• English translation & philological commentary: Oracc CAMS/GKAB; Izre'el, S. 2001. Adapa and the South Wind: Language Has the Power of Life and Death. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.
• Critical edition: Picchioni, S. A. 1981. Il poemetto di Adapa. Budapest; Foster, B. R. 2005. Before the Muses, pp. 525–530.

Related Concepts & Sources

Adapa (sage of Eridu), Enki / Ea (patron and counselor), An (sky god who offers the bread of life), Dumuzi & Ningishzida (gatekeepers of heaven), Eridu (cult city)