Etana

A Mesopotamian myth and epic poem that follows the adventures of a human hero, Etana, who seeks to acquire from the gods the secret of having children. The story also features elements of animal fables similar to those of the legendary Greek writer Aesop. As the tale begins, the god Enlil selects Etana to be king of the city of Kish. But Etana is worried because he does not have a son who can become his royal successor when he dies. The king prays to the sun god, Shamash, and asks for a son. Shamash tells Etana to seek out an eagle who had lost its ability to fly when a snake, retaliating after the eagle devoured the snake’s offspring, had bitten off its wings. The eagle and the snake had originally made a pact, promising not to eat each other’s children, but the eagle had reneged on the deal, as told in the second of the four tablets bearing the story:

He [the eagle] descended and ate up the serpent’s children. In the evening of the same day, the serpent came [home]. ... He [looked around and saw that] his children were [gone].

. . . The serpent [wept] before Shamash. . . . “My young are destroyed, while his [the eagle’s] young are safe.” When he had heard the serpent’s lament, Shamash. . . said to him: “Set an ambush [for the eagle]. . . . When he comes... seize him by his wings, [and] cut off his wings. ... Pluck him and cast him into a bottomless pit.

Let him die there of hunger and thirst.”

The snake had done as Shamash instructed.

Etana finds the eagle in the pit and carefully mends its broken wings. After a great deal of rehabilitation, the great bird is able to fly once more, and it carries Etana up into the sky, where the man hopes to find Inanna, goddess of sexual passion. Supposedly she possesses a magical plant that can make a person capable of having many children. The end of the story has been lost, but the Sumerian King List states that Etana did have an heir, so it seems likely that the epic originally concluded with Etana reaching heaven and obtaining the fertility plant.

See Also: Enlil; Inanna; Kish