Another legend was an endeavour to account for the origin of death.  Adapa or Adama, the first man, who had been created by Ea, was fishing one day in the deep sea, when he broke the wings of the south wind.  The south wind flew to complain to Anu in heaven, and Anu ordered the culprit to appear before him.  But Adapa was instructed by Ea how to act.  Clad in a garment of mourning, he won the hearts of the two guardians of the gate of heaven, the gods Tammuz and Gis-zida ("the firmly-fixed post"), so that they pleaded for him before Anu.  Food and water were offered him, but he refused them for fear that they might be the food and water of death.  Oil only for anointing and clothing did he accept.  “Then Anu looked upon him and raised his voice in lamentation:  ’O Adapa, wherefore atest thou not, wherefore didst thou not drink?  The gift of life cannot now be thine.’” Though “a sinful man” had been permitted “to behold the innermost parts of heaven and earth,” he had rejected the food and water of life, and death henceforth was the lot of mankind.

It is curious that the commencement of this legend, the latter portion of which has been found at Tel el-Amarna, had been brought to the British Museum from the ruins of the library of Nineveh many years ago.  But until the discovery of the conclusion, its meaning and character were indecipherable.  The copy made for the library of Nineveh was a late edition of the text which had been carried from Babylonia to the banks of the Nile eight hundred years before, and the fact emphasizes once more the Babylonian character of the culture and literature possessed by Palestine in the Patriarchal Age.

We need not wonder, therefore, if it is to Babylonia that the cosmological legends and beliefs of Phoenicia plainly point.  The watery chaos out of which the world was created, the divine hierarchies, one pair of deities proceeding from another and an older pair, or the victory of Kronos over the dragon Ophioneus, are among the indications of their Babylonian origin.  But far more important than these echoes of Babylonian mythology in the legendary lore of Phoenicia is the close relationship that exists between the traditions of Babylonia and the earlier chapters of Genesis.  As is now well known, the Babylonian account of the Deluge agrees even in details with that which we find in the Bible, though the polytheism of Chaldaea is there replaced by an uncompromising monotheism, and there are little touches, like the substitution of an “ark” for the Babylonian “ship,” which show that the narrative has been transported to Palestine.  Equally Babylonian in origin is the history of the Tower of Babel, while two of the rivers of Eden are the Tigris and Euphrates, and Eden itself is the Edin or “Plain” of Babylonia.