Ea obeys the order, delivers up Adapa, and everything happens as was foretold.
Upon mounting to heaven and on his approach to the gate of Anu, Tammuz and Gishzida were stationed at the gate of Anu. They saw Adapa and cried 'Help,[1104] Lord! Why art thou thus attired? For whom hast thou put on mourning?'[1105]
Adapa replies:
'Two gods have disappeared from the earth, therefore do I wear a mourning garment.'
'Who are the two gods who have disappeared from the earth?'
Tammuz and Gishzida looked at one another, broke out in lament. 'O Adapa! Step before King Anu.' As he approached, Anu saw him and cried out to him:
'Come, Adapa, why hast thou broken the wings of the south wind?'
Adapa answered Anu: 'My lord! For the house of my lord[1106] I was fishing in the midst of the sea. The waters lay still around me, when the south wind began to blow and forced me underneath. Into the dwelling of the fish it drove me. In the anger of my heart [I broke the wings of the south wind].'
Tammuz and Gishzida thereupon intercede with Anu on behalf of Adapa, and succeed in appeasing the god's wrath. If the story ended here, we would have a pure nature-myth—the same myth in a different form that we encountered in the Creation epic, in the Deluge story, and in the Zu legend. Adapa would be merely a designation of Marduk and nothing more. The sun triumphs over the storms, and the only objectionable feature in the tale—to a Babylonian—would be the degradation involved in obliging Marduk to secure the intercession of other gods. But this feature of itself suggests that the nature-myth has been embodied in the legend, but does not constitute the whole of it. A second element and one entirely independent in its character has been added to the myth.
Anu is appeased, but he is astonished at Ea's patronage of Adapa, as a result of which a mortal has actually appeared in a place set aside for the gods.