The eagle-stone (1)

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Certain Akkadian stone names have been adduced to explain Arabic and Greek counterparts. The fame of stones’ magical properties and the aitiological explanations pertaining to them have spread beyond Babylonia. The best known of these is the aitites or ‘eagle-stone’. Its name in Akkadian is aban erê or its phonetic variant aban arê, of which the second element, erû or arû, is both the word for eagle and the infinitive of the verb ‘to be pregnant’. In the Sumerian and Akkadian lists we find the ‘basic’ meaning, or at least the meaning that was considered primary: the Sumerian name of the stone is na₄.peš₄ ‘stone for pregnancy.’ Nevertheless, in Akkadian context, the name of the stone is often written, in rebus writing, with the Sumerogram NA₄.Á.MUŠEN, that is ‘stone of eagle-bird’. It is the homonymity of ‘pregnant’ and ‘eagle’, and the use of the logogram of the latter word for the former, that gave rise to the fable about the stone to be found in the nest of the eagle, brought by the eagle from India or other far-away places, or, according to other sources, found in the head of a fish called ‘eagle’, to serve as amulet for pregnant women.

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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