eeds: "Sleep came upon herself (the eagle) and she slept. The sun
was enlivening me pretty well though I was dead." Afterwards the eagle
bathed in a healing well, and as it splashed in the water, drops fell
on the hero and he came to life. "I grew stronger and more active", he
adds, "than I had ever been before."[196]

The eagle figures in various mythologies, and appears to have been at
one time worshipped as the god or goddess of fertility, and storm and
lightning, as the bringer of children, and the deity who carried souls
to Hades. It was also the symbol of royalty, because the earthly ruler
represented the controlling deity. Nin-Girsu, the god of Lagash, who
was identified with Tammuz, was depicted as a lion-headed eagle. Zeus,
the Greek sky and air god, was attended by an eagle, and may, at one
time, have been simply an eagle. In Egypt the place of the eagle is
taken by Nekhebit, the vulture goddess whom the Greeks identified with
"Eileithyia, the goddess of birth; she was usually represented as a
vulture hovering over the king".[197]

The double-headed eagle of the Hittites, which figures in the royal
arms of Germany and Russia, appears to have symbolized the deity of
whom the king was an incarnation or son. In Indian mythology Garuda,
the eagle giant, which destroyed serpents like the Babylonian Etana
eagle, issued from its egg like a flame of fire; its eyes flashed the
lightning and its voice was the thunder. This bird is identified in a
hymn with Agni, god of fire, who has the attributes of Tammuz and
Mithra, with Brahma, the creator, with Indra, god of thunder and
fertility, and with Yama, god of the dead, who carries off souls to
Hades. It is also called "the steed-necked incarnation of Vishnu", the
"Preserver" of the Hindu trinity who rode on its back. The hymn
referred to lauds Garuda as "the bird of life, the presiding spirit of
the animate and inanimate universe ... destroyer of all, creator of
all". It burns all "as the sun in his anger burneth all
creatures".[198]

Birds were not only fates, from whose movements in flight omens were
drawn, but also spirits of fertility. When the childless Indian sage
Mandapala of the _Mahabharata_ was refused admittance to heaven until
a son was born to him, he "pondered deeply" and "came to know that of
all creatures birds alone were blest with fecundity"; so he became a
bird.

It is of interest, therefore, to find the Etana eagle figuring as a
symbol of royalty