Contrary to their reputation, they are not exceptionally high flyers as compared with other birds, but they are extremely powerful and are often able to lift large prey such as sheep or monkeys. Perhaps their remoteness also contributed to an exalted reputation, since they prefer rocky cliffs or tall trees for their nests. Though eagles may be majestic, we should remember that royalty has never been universally beloved.
This symbolism of the eagle was already clearly established in the ancient Mesopotamian poem about Etana, possibly the first ruler ever to have his story written down. The epic of Etana begins with an eagle and a serpent swearing an oath of friendship to each other before Shamash, the god of the sun. The eagle lived in the top of a tree and the serpent at its base, and for a time they and their young shared every kill. One day the eagle ate the young of the serpent, who then burrowed in the carcass of a bull. As soon as the eagle approached to eat, the serpent bit it, cut its wings, and threw the bird into a pit to die of hunger and thirst. Shamash sent the hero Etana to rescue and nurse the eagle, which became his guide. Etana mounted on the back of the eagle to fly up to the heavens to ask Ishtar, a goddess of fertility, for the plant of birth so that he might have a son. The last sections of the manuscript are fragmentary, but Etana apparently did attain his goal and founded the first Sumerian dynasty.
The ascent of Etana is depicted on many seals, and the story seems to have had a wide influence. The Greeks later retold the episode of the two quarreling animals as an Aesopian fable called “The Eagle and the Fox.” The eagle violated a friendship by eating the young of the fox, which then set fire to the eagle's tree in revenge. The motif of a tree with an eagle at the top and a hostile serpent at the base, however, has often been found in myth and legend, and an example is Yggdrasil, the Norse tree of life. The story of Etana may well have influenced the Greek myth of Ganymede, a young man who was abducted by Zeus, in the form of an eagle, so that he might serve on Olympus as cupbearer of the gods. Eagles are, however, entirely capable of carrying off an infant or small child, and perhaps the story goes back to such a tragic incident.
The eagle was sacred to Zeus, and the god of thunder sent an eagle to eat the liver of the disobedient titan Prometheus each day, as he lay chained to a rock in the Caucasus Mountains. The liver would grow back during the night, and the cycle continued until the eagle was finally slain with an arrow by Hercules. The Roman standard was an eagle, and conquered peoples often adopted the symbol. The eagle is the initial inspiration for a huge range of mythological figures. The double-headed eagle first appears on Hittite reliefs in Mesopotamia. From there it spread to the Byzantine Empire, and today it is a symbol of Russia. The Assyro-Babylonian epic poem “Anzu” told of a lion-headed eagle so powerful that it could cause whirlwinds simply by flapping its wings. It once stole the Tablets of Destiny from Enlil, the god of the sky, and briefly ruled the world. Mysterious figures, sometimes known as “demon-griffins,” were carved on palace walls of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II. They had the bodies of men but the heads and wings of eagles, and they held up a pinecone in one hand, perhaps to enact a fertility rite. The lion shared a solar association with the eagle, and their features were often blended. Perhaps related to the lion-headed eagle, or Imdugud, is the first griffin, which had the face of an eagle, the body of a lion, and, sometimes at least, wings. The griffin first appeared in the art of Mesopotamia but quickly spread to Greece and beyond. Herodotus believed a griffin lived in the mountains of India, where it made a nest of gold. Dante placed a griffin in Paradise, where it drew the chariot of the church.
Closely related to the griffin was the Hindu Garuda, the king of birds and the mount of the god Vishnu. Garuda had the wings and beak of an eagle, and the rest of his body was human, but his vast form could darken the sky. Also inspired largely by the eagle were several other huge birds of legend such as the Arabian Roc and the Persian Simorgh.
In Christianity, the eagle became the symbol of Saint John the Evangelist and is always depicted on the ground by his side. According to The Golden Legend, written by Jacobus de Voragine in the late thirteenth century, this is because John once said, “The eagle . . . flies higher than any other bird and looks straight into the sun, yet by its nature must come down again; and the human spirit, after it rests awhile from contemplation, is refreshed and returns more ardently to heavenly thoughts” (vol. 1, p. 54). But like an eagle, John soars straight to the mystical heights at the start of his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word . . .”
Medieval bestiaries reported that when an eagle grew old it would first find a fountain. Then it would fly directly into the sun until its wings were singed and it fell into the waters. After repeating this three times, the eagle would once again be filled with youthful vigor, much like Christ, who rose from the dead on the third day after his burial.
One of the very few literary works in which eagles are viewed not with awe but with tenderness is “The Parliament of Fowles” by Geoffrey Chaucer, written in the late fourteenth century. On Saint Valentine's Day, the birds gathered at the temple of Venus to choose their mates. Several birds paid court to the lovely female eagle that sat in the hand of the goddess. When they had all set forth their claims, Nature ruled that the female eagle herself should make the choice, thus upholding love over politics. Lords and princesses, after all, are still human beings, just as even eagles are birds. In many ways the Native American view of the eagle was surprisingly similar to that of Europeans. The Plains Indians, most especially, admired the strength of the eagle and associated the bird with the sun. Eagle feathers represented solar rays, and they were used on headdresses and shields to indicate skill in war or hunting. The Indians also stylized the eagle into a mythical creature-the thunderbird. The beating of its wings causes thunder, while its beak is like lightning. The eagle is a bit like singers and actors who, after achieving great popular success, find themselves dominated by their public image. People have trouble comprehending that the eagle, so mighty in legend, can be very vulnerable in fact. This creature has been so prominent in symbolism over millennia that people even have trouble thinking of it as a genuine animal, and the cultural significance of the eagle seems to provide it with little protection. In countries such as the United States and Germany, eagles remain endangered despite being national emblems.
