The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

352 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

When he answered that it was for their own selves, because they
had vanished from the earth, their hearts were softened, and they
became his intercessors with Anu. Anu listened, and forgave;
but that a mortal man should behold the secrets of heaven and
earth was so contrary to right, that he ordered the food and water
of life to be offered him. Adapa, however, remembered the
commands of Ea, and, unlike the biblical Adam, refused the food
of immortality. Man remained mortal, and it was never again in
his power to eat of the tree of life. But in return, sovereignty
and dominion were bestowed upon him, and Adapa became the
father of mankind.
The legend is a Babylonian attempt to explain the existence of
death. It is like, and yet unlike, the story in Genesis. The biblical
Adam lost the gift of immortality because his desire to become
as God, knowing good and evil, had caused him to be driven
from the Paradise in which grew the tree of life. Adapa, on the
other hand, was already endowed with knowledge by his creator
Ea, and his loss of immortality was due, not to his disobedience,
but to his obedience to the commands of the god. Adam was
banished from the Garden of Eden,“lest he should put forth his
hand and take of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever”;
while in the Babylonian legend it was Anu himself who was
[385] reluctant that one who had entered the gate of heaven should
remain a mere mortal man. Babylonian polytheism allowed the
existence of divided counsels among the gods; the monotheism
of Israel made this impossible. There was no second Yahveh to
act in contradiction to the first; Yahveh was at once the creator
of man and the God of heaven, and there was none to dispute
His will. There is no room for Anu in the Book of Genesis; and
as Ea, the creator of Adapa, was unwilling that the man he had
created should become an immortal god, so Yahveh, the creator
of Adam, similarly denied to him the food of immortal life.
often signified“lady”than“lord.”It is possible that at Eridu she was held to
be the wife of Tammuz.