  The differential cross section for the reaction p(gamma, eta p) has been
measured from threshold to 1100 MeV photon laboratory energy. For the first
time, the region of the S11(1535) resonance is fully covered in a
photoproduction experiment and allows a precise extraction of its parameters at
the photon point. Above 1000 MeV, S-wave dominance vanishes while a P-wave
contribution is observed whose nature will have to be clarified. These high
precision data together with the already measured beam asymmetry data will
provide stringent constraints on the extraction of new couplings of baryon
resonances to the eta meson.
