Another Wrinkle on Old Adapa

ADAPA'S ASCENT - A Myth of Man & Immortality, 2020

This is a 10-page extract from an essay which appears as Appendix 2 after the English verse translation of 'Adapa's Ascent'. In this segment of his essay Edouard d'Araille discusses how he became acquainted with the 'Adapa' narrative and the challenge of translating it into English language poetry. It comes from the new volume 'Adapa's Ascent' (2020) which is an English Verse Translation of the Adapa legend from Akkadian and Sumerian cuneiform source documents. In the legend of Adapa, the main character is advised by his father Enki (who is a God) not to accept the Food and Water of Death when offered these in Heaven by Anu. He refuses these as advised and discovers that what he was offered was the Food and Water of Eternal Life. Therefore he has rejected Immortality and finds himself banished to Earth. That does not relate a tenth of the content of the poem 'Adapa's Ascent' but it gives an idea of one of its key themes - Man and Immortality. This extract from the essay 'Adapa's Ascent - Recreating an Ancient Classic' has been provided courtesy of Living Time ™ Books and is available to download for educational purposes only.

ADAPA's ASCENT: A Myth of Man & Immortality, 2020

This is the 'Publisher's Note' for the new English verse translation (from the Akkadian and Sumerian cuneiform source documents) of the Adapa legend by poet and historian of thought Edouard d'Araille. In this brief section the series editor of 'Great World Books', Mr. Alderson Smith, says a few words about the significance of the book, the project of bringing it to a general audience, and indicates some of its contents. 'Adapa' is considered by some to be a Sumerian parallel to 'Adam', also being a first man and in some forms of the legend a survivor of the Great Flood. In this volume he is presented in the myth that has become most famous, where he refuses the gift of Immortal Life from the supreme God Anu because of advice he has been given by his father (also a God) Enki. This extract of 'Adapa's Ascent' - featuring the Prelims of the book, including the 'Publisher's Note' - is provided courtesy of Living Time™ Books and is available to download for educational purposes only.

Ugarit Forschungen, 1973

Tlie best preserved manuscript of the Akkadian myth of Adapa is a tablet found in Egypt, in the Amarna archives, together with the correspondence sent to 18th dynasty Pharaohs froin Syria and beyond. The text was part and parcel of the scribal tradition on which the royal courts relied for the training of ad¬ equate interpreters of the diplomatic lingua franca of the period, Akkadian. To this end, next to instruction in the bare rudiments of the language, based on syllabaries and vocabularies, the teachers were also utilizing a corpus of Mesopotamian literary texts, such as, precisely, Adapa. The influence of these texts was most like¬ ly to be felt not only on the linguistic, but also on the cultural level: concepts and formulations were more apt to be assimilated and borrowed from one culture to the other through the intermediary of the scribal school, and as a result transference of Mesopotamian conceptions and literary topoi can be more easily under stood because often traceable through written evidence. As for Adapa, there seems to be, at first reading, no reverberation of its themes in the later traditions of Syria and Palestine, specifically in the Old Testament (note that, on the basis of the evidence from Amarna and elsewhere, it is legitimate to assume that the Syro-Palestinian scribes too, no less than their Egyptian counterparts, were familiar with Mesopotamian literary texts, which probably served as common instructional tools in the courts throughout the Westwitness, for instance, the Megiddo Gilgamesh tablet). Upon careful consideration, however, connections with Syrian traditions seem pos¬ sible also for Adapa; my interpretation, resting in part on a new understanding of some aspects of the myth itself, will form the basis of the present paper.

ADAPA's ASCENT: A Myth of Man & Immortality, 2020

This essay was included in the 2nd Edition onwards of Edouard d'Araille's English verse translation of 'Adapa's Ascent', a work that was based on source texts dating back around four millennia. This closing essay follows on from the two previous essays in the volume, entitled 'The Birth of Fiction' and 'Recreating an Ancient Classic'. This brief concluding section by the author of this translation presents some further thoughts of his on the difficulties and challenges of the process of creating a modern-day English translation of this ancient work. This extract has been provided here courtesy of Living Time™ Books.

Antoine Cavigneaux’s (2014) recent edition of the Tell Haddad version of Adapa allows for a fresh assessment of the myth in all of its available versions. Close examination of the Tell Haddad version and the Amarna Tablet in particular reveals that the two display different sets of logic and foci, with only the latter concerned especially with Adapa and his fate. This distinction is reflective not merely of fluidity in copying but instead appears to indicate evidence of revision in the course of transmission.

This paper takes as a model for discussing the issue of translating ancient texts into a modern langauge and for a modern western society an ancient Mesopotamian myth written in the Semitic Akkadian language. Aiming for an oral production for a Hebrew speaking audience in contemporary Israel, the translator has tackled problems of transmission in both poetics and language. The genre and linguistic gaps have been bridged by the existent proximity of the two cultures in poetic meter. Both the theorical approach and some practical problems and solutions are discussed.

ADAPA's ASCENT: A Myth of Man & Immortality, 2020

This is the complete essay - included as an appendix to Edouard d'Araille's translation of the 'Adapa' myth - in which the translator of that work of poetry provides a step-by-step exegesis of the processes through which it was created. It explores the discovery, the research, the narrative theory and the choice of words involved in the production of this English language version of what is perhaps one of the shortest epics in ancient literature. The task of composition is described from many different aspects so that the complexity of the task of even considering to render the cuneiform fragments into a continuous story - which synthesises all available tablets - is understood to be more a task of interpretation and artistry than one of science and history. Edouard d'Araille describes how he first discovered the myth, what lengths he went to in his research and what he has hoped to achieve through producing a version that brings together all the existing tablet fragments (recounting the 'Adapa' legend) into one unified narrative whole. To do this, he break downs 'Adapa's Ascent' into its components and explains the interpretations that have been made of the material in every individual section, allowing for significant manoeuvre in alternative readings. In the concluding stages of this essay, he discusses other specific challenges that were faced in creating a work of poetry while attempting to do justice to the variable hermeneutical stances of the academic community to the sources. The complete poem 'Adapa's Ascent' is available to download from this Academia.edu page by kind courtesy of Living Time™ Books.

Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 3:3, 1997

It is well known from the work of Wilhelm Rau that the opposition of eater (attñ) and eaten (adya) is used by the Vedic poets as a conceptual frame to articulate social ideology. 2 As Ś.B 13.2.9.8 and numerous other passages put it: the brahmins and the k÷atriya-s unite to 'eat' the people (viö). Life and society are understood by the Vedic poets in terms of the basic struggle of acquiring food. Food itself becomes the most basic conceptual tool by which the functioning of the human being, human society and the cosmos are understood.

Interdisziplinäre Zeitschrift für Südasienforschung, 2020

The adhyāyas 114 to 117 of the Anuśāsanaparvan (the 13th book of the Mahābhārata) introduce the topic of ahiṃsā (non-violence) and its relation to vege-tarianism. All in all, the text enjoins that following a vegetarian diet is the greatest non-violent practice. However, several verses of this section allow practices related to Vedic sacrifice, which include meat offerings. In view of the principles of non-violence , such an "exception" to the ahiṃsā rule may be seen by some as a logical inconsistency. Instead, I argue that such apparent contradiction can be resolved if we consider that the Mahābhārata addresses different audiences. On one side, there are those leading a contemplative life (nivṛtti), aiming at spiritual upliftment, who follow the path of ahiṃsā and maintain a vegetarian diet. On the other side, those engaged in an active life (pravṛtti) perform Vedic rituals in view of worldly objects and relish the animals sacrificed to the gods. As a result of their class duty, Hindu warriors may also hunt and eat animals. In this article, I further implement my arguments and investigate the relation between non-violence and vegetarianism in the Mahābhārata.