Introduction
Adapa is a wise sage created by the god Enki, granted great wisdom but, notably, not immortality — a limitation central to his story's tragic irony.
Family
- Father: Enki (Ea)
- Siblings: Marduk
Immortality Refused by Mistake
After Adapa broke the wing of the south wind in anger, he was summoned before Anu in heaven to answer for it. Enki, fearing Anu intended to poison Adapa, warned him not to eat or drink anything offered there. In fact, the food and drink Anu offered were the food and water of immortality — so Adapa, following his father's mistaken warning, unknowingly refused the one chance to gain eternal life, a myth Mesopotamian tradition used to explain why wisdom, though granted to humanity through figures like Adapa, did not come bundled with immortality.
Mesopotamian religion spans Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian sources composed and recopied across nearly three thousand years, so names, genealogies, and even a deity's role often shift between traditions (Sumerian An/Enki/Inanna alongside their Akkadian/Babylonian forms Anu/Ea/Ishtar); the account above follows the most widely attested version, usually as consolidated in the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the standard Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh.