le hour she bore him:
'Friend, behold the earth what it is.--The face of the earth stretches
out quite flat--and the sea is no greater than a mere.' The space of
a second double hour she bore him: 'Friend, behold the earth what it
is,--the earth is no more than a square plot in a garden, and the great
sea is not greater than a puddle of water.'" At the third hour Etana
lost courage, and cried, "Stop!" and the eagle immediately descended
again; but, Etana's strength being exhausted, he let go his hold, and
was dashed to pieces on the ground.

The eagle escaped unhurt this time, but she soon suffered a more painful
death than that of Etana. She was at war with the serpent, though the
records which we as yet possess do not vouchsafe the reason, when she
discovered in the roots of a tree the nest in which her enemy concealed
its brood. She immediately proposed to her young ones to pounce down
upon the growing snakes; one of her eaglets, wiser than the rest,
reminded her that they were under the protection of Shamash, the great
righter of wrongs, and cautioned her against any transgression of the
divine laws. The old eagle felt herself wiser than her son, and rebuked
him after the manner of wise mothers: she carried away the serpent's
young, and gave them as food to her own brood. The hissing serpent
crawled as far as Shamash, crying for vengeance: "The evil she has done
me, Shamash--behold it! Come to my help, Shamash! thy net is as wide as
the earth--thy snares reach to the distant mountain--who can escape
thy net?--The criminal Zu, Zu who was the first to act wickedly, did he
escape it?" Shamash refused to interfere personally, but he pointed out
to the serpent an artifice by which he might satisfy his vengeance as
securely as if Shamash himself had accomplished it. "Set out upon the
way, ascend the mountain,--and conceal thyself in a dead bull;--make
an incision in his inside--tear open his belly,--take up thy
abode--establish thyself in his belly. All the birds of the air will
pounce upon it....--and the eagle herself will come with them, ignorant
that thou art within it;--she will wish to possess herself of the
flesh, she will come swiftly--she will think of nothing but the entrails
within. As soon as she begins to attack the inside, seize her by her
wings, beat down her wings, the pinions of her wings and her claws, tear
her and throw her into a ravine of the mountain, that she may die there
a death of hunger and thir