severely punished unless the god should determine its expiation by
giving the philtre of immortality to the intruder. Anu decided on the
latter course, and addressed Adapa: "'Why, then, did Ea allow an unclean
mortal to see--the interior of heaven and earth?' He handed him a cup,
he himself reassured him.--'We, what shall we give him? The food of
life--take some to him that he may eat.' The food of life, some was
taken to him, but he did not eat of it. The water of life, some was
taken to him, but he drank not of it. A garment, it was taken to him,
and he put it on. Oil, some was taken to him, and he anointed himself
with it." Anu looked upon him; he lamented over him: "'Well, Adapa, why
hast thou not eaten--why hast thou not drunk? Thou shalt not now have
eternal life.' Ea, my lord, has commanded me: thou shalt not eat, thou
shalt not drink." Adapa thus lost, by remembering too well the commands
of his father, the opportunity which was offered to him of rising to
the rank of the immortals; Anu sent him back to his home just as he had
come, and Shutu had to put up with his broken wings.

Bamman absorbed one after the other all these genii of tempest and
contention, and out of their combined characters his own personality of
a hundred diverse aspects was built up.

[Illustration: 177.jpg THE BIRDS OF THE TEMPEST]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean cylinder in the
Museum of New York. Lenormant, in a long article, which he
published under the pseudonym of Mansell, fancied he
recognized here the encounter between Sabitum and Gilgames
on the shores of the Ocean.

He was endowed with the capricious and changing disposition of the
element incarnate in him, and passed from tears to laughter, from anger
to calm, with a promptitude which made him one of the most disconcerting
deities. The tempest was his favourite role. Sometimes he would burst
suddenly on the heavens at the head of a troop of savage subordinates,
whose chiefs were known as Matu, the squall, and Barku, the lightning;
sometimes these were only the various manifestations of his own nature,
and it was he himself who was called Matu and Barku. He collected the
clouds, sent forth the thunder-bolt, shook the mountains, and "before
his rage and violence, his bellowings, his thunder, the gods of heaven
arose to the firmament--the gods of the earth sank into the earth" in
their terror. The monuments represent him as armed for battle wit