Etana

This article is about the Sumerian king Etana. For the reggae singer of the same name see Etana (musician) .

The clay unrolling of a cylinder seal with elements of the Etana myth (including "Ride on an Eagle").

Etana (also Entena ; Sumerian ^m en.te.na lugal .e lu bi.in.e.de ; Central Assyrian ^m e-ta-na ) was according to the Sumerian king list the first earthly king after the great flood , the first dynasty founded by Kiš . He was nicknamed "the shepherd who ascended to heaven".

Etana myth

The existing written material allows the original version to be dated to at least the 24th century BC. BC and thus in the probable time of writing the Gilgamesh epic . After the city of Kiš was founded, a king was needed. In the Neo-Assyrian version it says, among other things:

" ¹  Etana said to the eagle ²  'My friend, this God showed me in a dream: ³  We went through the entrance gate of Anu , Enlil and Ea , ⁴  we bowed, you and I, ⁵  we went through the entrance gate of Sin , Adad , Šamaš and Ištar , ⁶  we bowed, you and I, ⁷  I saw a house without a window, the seal ... ⁸  I opened the door and went in '. "

- Neo-Assyrian version, page A, lines 1-8

Ištar, the goddess of love and war and the daughter of the moon god, later found the shepherd Etana and made him the first king of Kiš. On cylinder seals is shown as he sits on a rising eagle, while his two (shepherd) dog look from Earth. Etana wanted to bring down “the herb of childbirth” for his childless wife from heaven, but fell down with his eagle when he had almost reached the goal. In the Gilgamesh epic, Enkidu meets the dead Etana in a dream:

" ¹⁶⁵  What a dream, my friend ( Gilgamesh ), I saw during the course of the night ... ¹⁶⁸  There was a man with a very dark face ... ¹⁸²  He had transformed me into a being that resembles a dove .. . ¹⁸⁴  He thinks I'm packed and leads me to the house of the Dark, the seat of the ereshkigal ... ¹⁸⁹  to where (residents) feed on dust her ... ¹⁹⁸  In the house of dust which I entered, ²⁰²  sits Etana, ²⁰³  there sits the queen of the underworld, Ereškigal. ²⁰⁶  She raised her head, her gaze fell on me. "

- 7th panel of the Epic of Gilgamesh

literature

• Michael Haul: The Etana Epic. A myth of the ascension of the King of Kisch (= Göttingen workbooks on ancient oriental literature. Book 1). Seminar for cuneiform writing research, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 978-3-00-008706-6 .
• Wayne Horowitz : Mesopotamian cosmic geography (= Mesopotamian civilizations. Volume 8). Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake 1998, ISBN 0-931464-99-4 .
• Joan Oates : Babylon. City and empire in the focus of the ancient Orient. Gondrom, Bindlach 1990, ISBN 3-8112-0727-X .
• Helmut Freydank : The animal fables in the Etana myth. In: Mitteilungen des Institut für Orientforschung 17 (1971), pp. 1–13.
• Wolfgang Röllig : Reflections on the Etana myth. In: Ingrid Gamer-Wallert , Wolfgang Helck (Hrsg.): Gegengabe. Festschrift for Emma Brunner-Traut . Attempto, Tübingen 1991, pp. 283-288.

Movies

With information about the possible origin of the Etana myth:

• Karakum, the city of the dead in the oasis (also: Karakum - forgotten desert cities ). Documentation , France 2001, ARTE F. Director: Marc Jampolsky ( Info ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ))
• Karakum, secrets of the black desert . Documentation , France 2004, ARTE F. Director: Marc Jampolsky ( Info )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Claus Wilcke: About the divine nature of royalty and its origin in heaven . In: Franz-Reiner Erkens: The sacredness of rule - legitimization of rule in the change of times and spaces: Fifteen interdisciplinary contributions to a worldwide and epoch-spanning phenomenon . Akademie, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-05-003660-5 , p. 67.
2. ^ Wayne Horowitz: Mesopotamian cosmic Geography (Mesopotamian civilizations 8) . P. 51.
3. ↑ Stefan M. Maul: The Gilgamesh epic . Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-52870-8 , pp. 106-107.

predecessor	Office	successor
Ziusudra (end of the divine dynasty)	King of Kiš around 2799 BC Chr.	Baliḫ