Erra (sometimes called Irra) is an Akkadian plague god known from an 'epos'Peter Machinist and Jack M. Sasson, "Rest and Violence in the Poem of Erra" Journal of the American Oriental Society 103.1 (January 1983, pp. 221-226) p. 221, prefer to withhold the expectations raised by "'myth', or worse, 'epic'" and simply call it "poem". of the eighth century BCE. Erra is the god of mayhem and pestilence who is responsible for periods of political confusion. He was assimilated to Nergal at some point.Nergal and Ereshkigal: Re-enchanting the Mesopotamian Underworld, 2000, Gateways to Babylon
Epic of Erra In the epic that is given the modern title Erra, the writer Kabti-ilani-Marduk,Kabti-ilani-Marduk’s name has also surfaced in the “Catalogue of Texts and Authors” from the library of Ashurbanipal, published by Lambert in JCS 16. a descendant, he says, of Dabibi, presents himselfErra V, 42-61 in a colophon following the text as simply the transcriber of a visionary dream in which Erra himself revealed the text.
The poem opens with an invocation. The god Erra is sleeping fitfully with his consort (identified with Mamītum and not with the mother goddess Mami)Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses: Erra (god). Accessed 03 December, 2013.Rafael Jiménez Zamudio, '"El Poema de Erra" Ediciones Clásicas(1999). but is roused by his advisor Išum and the Seven (Sibitti or Sebetti), who are the sons of heaven and earthAmong the Greeks the Titans were sons of heaven and earth.—"champions without peer" is the repeated formula—and are each assigned a destructive destiny by Anu. Machinist and Sasson (1983) call them "personified weapons". The Sibitti call on Erra to lead the destruction of mankind. Išum tries to mollify Erra's wakened violence, to no avail. Foreign peoples invade Babylonia, but are struck down by plague. Even Marduk, the patron of Babylon, relinquishes his throne to Erra for a time. Tablets II and III are occupied with a debate between Erra and Išum. Erra goes to battle in Babylon, Sippar, Uruk, Dūr-Kurigalzu and Dēr. The world is turned upside down: righteous and unrighteous are killed alike. Erra orders Išum to complete the work by defeating Babylon's enemies. Then the god withdraws to his own seat in Emeslam with the terrifying Seven, and mankind is saved. A propitiatory prayer ends the work.
The poem must have been central to Babylonian culture: at least thirty-six copies have been recovered from five first-millennium sites—Assur, Babylon, Nineveh, Sultantepe and UrThe provenance of some Erra tablets is not securely known. (Machinist and Sasson 1983:221 note 2).—more, even, as the assyriologist and historian of religions Luigi Giovanni Cagni points out, than have been recovered of the Epic of Gilgamesh.L. Cagni, '"The Poem of Erra" SANE 1.3 (1977).
The text appears to some readers to be a mythologisation of historic turmoil in Mesopotamia, though scholars disagree as to the historic events that inspired the poem: the poet exclaims (tablet IV:3) "You changed out of your divinity and made yourself like a man."
The Erra text soon assumed magical functionsBurkert, Walter. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influences on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, 1992, p. 109-10. Parts of the text were inscribed on amulets employed for exorcism and as a prophylactic against the plague. The Seven are known from a range of Akkadian incantation texts: their demonic names vary,However, Cagni as well as Daniel Bodi () state that the Sebetti are individually nameless. but their number, seven, is invariable.
The five tablets containing the Erra epos were first published in 1956,P. Felix Gössmann, editor. Das Erra-epos (Würzburg) 1956. George Smith had published a fragment in The Chaldean Account of Genesis, 1875 as "The Exploits of Lubara". with an improved text, based on additional finds, appearing in 1969.Cagni, L. editor. L'Epopea di Erra in Studi Semitici 34, (Rome: Istituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente), 1969. Critical edition. Perhaps 70% of the poem has been recovered.Machinist and Sasson 1983:222.
Walter BurkertBurkert 1992:108ff. noted the consonance of the purely mythic seven led by Erra with the Seven against Thebes, widely assumed by Hellenists to have had a historical basis.
The Erra and Ishum epic also makes mention and references the flood myth, a reinterpretation of the story in Atrahasis.
See also Religion in Mesopotamia
Notes
External links Erra and Išum critical edition and translation of the text (electronic Babylonian Library). Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses: Erra (god)