Ea (originally the primal deity of the Sumerian city of Eridu and eventually the god of the waters on and beneath the Earth) formed with Anu, the god of Heaven, and Enlil, the god of the Earth, from the earliest period the great triad at the head of the Babylonian pantheon. The representation of Ea took the form of a sea-monster with a body of a big fish, full of stars, and claws for the base of his feet.[934]

Ea is ordinarily known from the pretty legend woven round his mortal son Adapa, and the command in obedience to which Adapa firmly but unconsciously made refusal of the gift of immortality.

The latter, to supply his father’s household, went a-fishing in the sea one day—fish food was evidently not the “abomination” to the Sumerian that it was to the Egyptian gods—but suddenly Shūtu the South Wind came on to blow, upset his sailing boat, and ducked him under the water, or, as Adapa puts it, “made me descend to the house of my lord,” i.e. Ea, god of the Sea.[935] In anger Adapa caught the South Wind and broke her wings.[936] But for this assault he was haled to appear in heaven before Anu, who had noticed, or had learnt through his messenger,[937] that the South Wind had ceased, according to the earlier or Eridean account, to blow for seven days.

Before setting out Adapa was bidden by Ea to put on garments of mourning to propitiate the two gods, Tammuz and Gishzida, guarding the portals of heaven, but was warned not to touch at any hazard what he purposely misnamed the “Bread of Death,” or the “Water of Death,” which would be offered unto him.[938] He could, however, accept the garment and the oil when likewise presented.

At the interview the guardian gods interceded so successfully with Anu that his wrath waned; he granted a pardon, and decided that as Adapa had seen the interior of heaven, he should be added to the company of the gods.

He therefore commanded that the “Bread of Life” and the “Water of Life” should be brought forth; but Adapa would neither eat nor drink of them, although he put on the proffered garment and anointed himself with the poured-out oil. And Anu, when he saw that Adapa had not partaken of the “Bread of Life,” or of the “Water of Life,” asked him, saying, “Come, Adapa, why dost thou neither eat nor drink?” And Adapa answered that he had refused to eat or drink, because Ea his lord had so commanded him.

Whereon comes the conclusion of the whole matter, and the loss of immortality in the last words of Anu, “And now thou canst not live!”[939]

Ea was regarded not only as the god of the sea, but of wisdom, somewhat perhaps on the lines of myths common to Greece, India, and elsewhere, which tell us that always by the way of the sea came civilisation. The great civilisations of the world have in fact been developed round the shores of the great seas—the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic.

The Assyrian legends credit Ea for the most part with good-will and beneficent acts towards mankind.[940]

Prominent among these stands out his revelation, by means of a dream, to Utnapishti of the all-destroying flood, which the gods, wroth at the sins of mankind, had ordained, and his command forthwith to build a ship, whose size and shape, etc., are given with much precision, e.g. it was coated inside and out with bitumen and divided into cells. On this Utnapishti and his family and servants embarked, after bringing on board all the gold and silver they could collect, and “seeds of life of all kinds,” and beasts, both domestic and wild.[941]

The Sumerian original of the Babylonian Deluge story, which has now been recovered, corresponds with the main features of the later version.

In both a flood is sent to destroy mankind, but in the first the intention of the gods is revealed in time to a pious Sumerian, possibly a priest king, Ziudsuddu, the Sumerian equivalent of the abbreviated Semitic name Utnapishti. He escapes from the flood in a great boat, which floats away on the waters. When the storm after seven days[942] has abated and the sun at last struggled out, Ziudsuddu makes a thanksgiving sacrifice of an ox and a sheep. We find him in the end reconciled with the great gods, who, as in the Babylonian version, give him immortality.

From the incompleteness of the text it is impossible to determine whether in the Sumerian version the episode of the birds occurs; the probability is that it did not. As is but natural, the earlier story is simpler and more primitive in style than the Babylonian.[943]

In the Gilgamesh account of the Flood, which in general resembles the story as given by Berosus, the absence of the raven, in the Bible the return of the dove with an olive leaf in her mouth, proclaims the abating of the waters, while the Algonkins allot the rôle, on the failure of the raven, to the muskrat. But, in the Indian legend it is a fish, not a god, which not only conveys to Manu the beneficent warning of the coming deluge but also saves him eventually by drawing his ship to a northern mountain.[944]