Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [47]
Shlomo Izre’el recently completed a full-scale study of the Adapa myth.12 For him, the relationship between gods and humans is easily understood in the myth. While animals, humans, and gods have life, only humans and gods can have wisdom and only gods can have eternal life. What humans get, instead, are divinely sanctioned rites. Perhaps wisdom serves as a consolation, which might even be understandable as a theme of the garden of Eden story in the Bible. On the other hand, the Adapa story provides us with a convincing etiology for a particular group of ritual exorcisms.
Etana
THE ETANA EPIC though even more fragmentary and inconclusive than the Adapa legend should also be explored. Etana was the famous King of Kish, described in the Sumerian King List as: “A shepherd, the one who ascended to heaven.”13 He resorts to undertaking a heavenly journey in order to find the plant of birth, hoping to remedy his childlessness. Unfortunately, the remedy is difficult to obtain because it belongs to the beautiful but dreaded goddess Inanna (Akkadian: Ishtar). Progeny was a significant way to gain “immortality” in Mesopotamian culture, as it is in ours, and miraculous plants are now seen as the stock-in-trade of Near Eastern myth and fable. Perhaps this myth makes reference to some real plant with a reputation for medicinal properties in augmenting fertility. Regardless Etana’s adventure begins with an act of compassion: He saves an eagle from imprisonment by a serpent in a pit and, in return, Etana is allowed to hitchhike a ride with the eagle to heaven. But the eagle offends Shamash, the sun god, by traversing his realm with a mortal. The Annunaki, who now serve as a council of fifty “Fates,” eat the snake’s offspring in their bird-like form.
The Etana text becomes fragmentary just as Etana becomes too heavy a burden for the eagle. Doubting that he can make the journey, Etana begins to fall. At this point, we are unable to decipher what happens to our much beset hero. Heaven is not for mortals, either alive or dead. Like Icarus, Etana is a person dangerously out of his native environment whose punishment, a fall from a great height, was tragic. Unlike the fate of Icarus, Etana’s end does not appear to be disastrous. Whatever happens next, Etana appears to have accomplished his mission, since other texts list Etana’s son and heir among the kings of Kish and no existing text reports a premature demise (ANET, p. 114).
We can perhaps interpolate some of the missing data: The eagle probably returns the favor that Etana has done for him saving Etana from his fall. Furthermore, Etana’s name has long been connected with wisdom. And it is in Wisdom Literature, the literary advice of scribes together with their knowledge of divination and exorcism, that we find the most references to heaven and hell.
Wisdom, Ascent to Heaven, and Mortality
SOME OF THE references to heaven appear in technical contexts as well. In the Assyrian Dream Book, there are also a few short references to ascensions. The most famous one can be found in Column IV of the Susa tablet:
If a man ascends and the go[ds bless him: this man] will die.
If a man ascends and the gods [curse him: this man will live long.]14
The Assyrian texts follow the standard reversal pattern for these dream manuals, interpreting positive dream happenings with negative outcomes in life and vice versa. Nevertheless, we should not overlook the implication that these short texts evidently associate dying with a heavenly journey. A person who dreams of ascending to heaven will die, whereas one who is cursed in the dream will live long. However early death does not mean that the dying one will ascend to heaven; actually