Lecture VIII. The Myths And Epics. 391
them“like a small bread-basket.”But before they can reach their
destination the destined penalty overtakes the presumptuous pair.
The eagle's wings fail him, and he falls through space, and both
he and his burden are dashed to the ground.
With this story of Etana there has been coupled a legend,
or rather fable, of the eagle itself, which the mutilated state
of our copies of it renders extremely obscure. The eagle had
devoured the young of the serpent, who accordingly appealed to
the sun-god, the judge of all things, for justice. By the sun-god's
advice the serpent creeps into the carcase of a dead ox, and there,
when the eagle comes to feed upon the putrifying flesh, seizes
his enemy, strips him of his feathers, and leaves him to die of
hunger and thirst. This must have happened after the fall of
the eagle from heaven; and we may therefore conjecture that, [426]
while his human companion was killed, like Icarus, by the fall,
the punishment of the eagle was deferred. But it came finally;
not even the most powerful of the winged creation could venture
with impunity into the heaven of the gods.
While the celestial seat of Istar was beyond the reach of man,
Istar herself sought Tammuz, the bridegroom of her youth, in
the underground realm of Hades, in the hope that she might give
him to drink of the waters of life which gushed up under the
throne of the spirits of the earth, and so bring him back once
more to life and light. The poem which told of her descent into
Hades was sung at the yearly festival of Tammuz by the women,
who wept for his untimely death. Like Baldyr, the youngest and
most beautiful of the gods, he was cut off in the flower of his
youth, and taken from the earth to another world. But while
the myth embodied in the poem, and illustrated by numberless
engraved seals, makes him descend into Hades, the older belief
of Eridu, where he had once been a water-spirit,—“the son of the
spirit of the deep,”—transferred him to the heaven above, where,
along with Nin-gis-zida,“the lord of the upright post,”he served
as warder of the celestial gate. In my Hibbert Lectures I have