Another cycle of stories deals with the winds.  The god Zu longs to have absolute power over the world.  To that end he lurks about the door of the sun-god, the possessor of the tablets of fate whereby he controls all things.  Each morning before beginning his journey, the sun-god steps out to send light showers over the world.  Watching his opportunity, Zu glides in, seizes the tablets of fate, and flies away and hides himself in the mountains.  So great horror comes over the world:  it is likely to be scorched by the sun-god’s burning beams.  Anu calls on the storm-god Ramman to conquer Zu, but he is frightened and declines the task, as do other gods.  Here, unfortunately, the tablet is broken, so that we do not know by whom the normal order was finally restored.

In the collection of cuneiform tablets disinterred at Amarna in 1887 was found the curious story of Adapa.  The demigod Adapa, the son of Ea, fishing in the sea for the family of his lord, is overwhelmed by the stormy south wind and cast under the waves.  In anger he breaks the wings of the wind, that it may no longer rage in the storm.  Anu, informed that the south wind no longer blows, summons Adapa to his presence.  Ea instructs his son to put on apparel of mourning, present himself at Anu’s gate, and there make friends with the porters, Tammuz and Iszida, so that they may speak a word for him to Anu; going into the presence of the royal deity, he will be offered food and drink which he must reject, and raiment and oil which he must accept.  Adapa carries out the instructions of his father to the letter.  Anu is appeased, but laments that Adapa, by rejecting heavenly food and drink, has lost the opportunity to become immortal.  This story, the record of which is earlier than the sixteenth century B.C., appears to contain two conceptions:  it is a mythical description of the history of the south wind, but its conclusion presents a certain parallelism with the end of the story of Eden in Genesis; as there Adam, so here Adapa, fails of immortality because he infringes the divine command concerning the divine food.  We have here a suggestion that the story in Genesis is one of the cycle which dealt with the common earthly fact of man’s mortality.

The legend of Dibbarra seems to have a historical basis.  The god Dibbarra has devastated the cities of Babylonia with bloody wars.  Against Babylon he has brought a hostile host and slain its people, so that Marduk, the god of Babylon, curses him.  And in like manner he has raged against Erech, and is cursed by its goddess Ishtar.  He is charged with confounding the righteous and unrighteous in indiscriminate destruction.  But Dibbarra determines to advance against the dwelling of the king of the gods, and Babylonia is to be further desolated by civil war.  It is a poetical account of devastating wars as the production of a hostile diety.  It is obvious that these legends have many features in common with those of other lands, myths of conflict between wind and sun, and the ambition of heroes to scale the heights of heaven.  How far these similarities are the independent products of similar situations, and how far the results of loans, cannot at present be determined.