Anu asks why he hasn’t eaten and Adapa tells him. However, Adapa doesn’t eat or drink that which would give him eternal life, think that it would kill him.
Anu, far from smiting the human, is forced to play host. Adapa makes friends and influences people.
So, Ea coaches Adapa how to ingratiate himself to Anu but warns him that the food and drink offered by Anu could kill him. No one really wants this to happen, especially Anu but that’s the way things go. Since this is Heaven, the food and drink would make Adapa immortal. However, Ea-the crafty god that he is-also knows that if Adapa isn’t punished, Anu will be forced by the rules of hospitality to offer him food and drink-since he did invite him to his heavenly mansion and all. Presumably Ea sees the writing on the wall that Adapa is toast unless he intervenes because he preps Adapa for his divine audience. The meeting is to lay down the law that humans are not to be going around doing such things. He gains a council with the Mesopotamian high god Anu after breaking the South Wind’s wings with a spell he presumably learned from his master, Ea. This first part of the tale reminds me strongly of Adapa. Then she causes the earth to lose its fertility, and the hymn ties it all back to Persephone and Hades story. Demeter is incensed and tell Mateneira as much. The process aborted, the boy will be only a mortal man. However, Metaneira discovers the ritual one night and thinks that Demeter is trying to kill the boy. To this end, Demeter begins to nurse Keleus and Metaneira’s young son, Demophon and she secretly begins a process of divinization. Thus we get the standard theme of “entertaining angels unawares” - hospitality in actionĭemeter accepts the hospitality of the king and his wife Metaneira, and as such she is bound by the rules of hospitality to reciprocate as best she can. Demeter is found there by three daughters of Keleus, king of Eleusis, who (after OK-ing it with the folks) bring her back to the homestead. She winds up wasting away, disguised as an old lady, at a well. After Persephone is abducted by Hades at Zeus’ request, Demeter goes wandering in her grief and despair. While I remembered the whole affair with Persephone eating the pomegranate and being stuck in Hell for a third of the year, I had forgotten the entire first half of the myth. The hymn recounts Persephone’s abduction by Hades and while one would expect to pick up echoes of the Mesopotamian myths of the “Nergal and Ereshkigal” and the “Descent of Inana/Ishtar” what resonated most with me were the strong similarities with “Adapa and the South Wind.” The hymn’s major focus, I would argue is on hospitality. I read this text many years ago, but I obviously hadn’t been so engaged with the ancient Near East at the time. Yesterday I reread the Homeric “Hymn to Demeter” for a class I’m teaching this fall.
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