Erra

Summary

Erra is the Mesopotamian god of war, plague and famine. His house was Emeslam at Kutha, the house of Nergal himself, and scribes drew the two together from the Old Akkadian period on, until in some texts the two names belong to one hero. His father is Anu, his wife Mami, and his titles in the texts are "warrior" and "lord of plague and carnage".

His story is a Babylonian poem of the first millennium BCE, about 660 lines on five tablets, known as Erra and Išum, which opens with praise of Išum, his companion and champion, "the torch" who walks before him. Erra lies in his house with his wife Mami like a sleepless man, his limbs weary, asking himself: shall I get up or go on sleeping? Around him stand the Seven, sons of Anu by the Earth: Anu gathered them and fixed a destiny for each, telling the second "burn like fire and blaze like a flame", the third "let your face be that of a lion", the seventh "finish all life", and then handed them to Erra, saying: when the noise of the people becomes unbearable to you, let these be your weapons. The Seven shout at Erra: why do you stay in the city like a worn-out old man, like a child in a house? The abundant bread of the city cannot compare with the cake baked in embers, nor the fine beer with water from a waterskin. Go out to the field: the Anunnaki cannot sleep for the people's noise, and our swords are rusty for lack of blood.

Their words please him, and he asks Išum to open the road. Išum pities the people and asks him: why have you plotted evil against the gods? Erra answers: "In heaven I am a wild bull, on earth I am a lion.. in the reedbed I am the fire, in the forest the axe.. when I enter the steppe, I take up residence as Nergal.. and yet the black-headed people despise me." Then he goes to Babylon, to Esagil, and says to Marduk: why is your image covered with filth and your crown dimmed? Marduk reminds him that once he rose from his throne in anger and the flood came, and the seams of heaven and earth were torn; and he asks: where are the craftsmen I sent down to the Apsû, where is the mēsu tree? Erra offers to take his place and hold heaven and earth together while Marduk goes to have his garments cleansed and comes back. Marduk agrees.

In the following tablets Erra grows fiercer and lets loose war. Išum tells what he did, speaking to Erra as "you": Suteans and Aramaeans invade the land and the cities of Babylonia are ruined, and Marduk laments his city: "Alas for Babylon, whose crown I fashioned luxuriant as a palm's, but which the wind has scorched." In the end Išum calms his companion. The poem closes by saying that its author, Kabti-ilāni-Marduk, saw it in a dream, revealed to him by Erra, and that it is a sign from the god; and so some copies were written on amulets, probably carried by their owners as protection against violence and ruin.

The idea the poem turns on is that burning rules when the keeper is away. In Enūma eliš Marduk builds and orders the world; in this poem he rises from his throne to have his image restored, Erra sits in his place, and the land catches fire. What moves the Seven is what moved Enlil in Atrahasis: the noise of the people that keeps the gods from sleep. No weapon stops Erra; what stops him is Išum's speech, telling him what he has done, and then the poem itself, which became an amulet people carried.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Erra is written with a vowel and a doubled r. J. J. M. Roberts read it from the Semitic root of scorching, ḥ-r-r, making Erra "scorched earth". Akkadian drops ḥ and leaves an e in its place, as the ʿayn of ʿAthtar fell to give Eštar on the Ishtar page. So Erra is Arabic ḥarr: in Lane ḥarr is heat, the opposite of cold, and a ḥarrah is a stony tract whose stones are black as though burned with fire. The Babylonian essay reads the name from ʾarra and glosses it as "its heat grew fierce, it kindled and burned", so its meaning is the meaning of ḥ-r-r, and the glottal stop in its reading stands where the ḥ fell. That is what the poem makes him: "in the reedbed I am the fire", and "Babylon, which the wind has scorched".

Linguistic Root

Written forms

Roberts derives the name from the Semitic root ḥ-r-r, "to scorch", and holds that Erra was first the scorched earth left by a grass or forest fire, then the famine that follows the burning of land in war. ORACC notes that not everyone accepts this. Two things bring the name close to ḥ: Akkadian drops ḥ and ʿ and leaves an e in their place, so *ḥarr- becomes err-; and Erra's titles in the texts are fire, warrior and the burning of cities.

In Lane the Arabic root ḥ-r-r holds two senses that meet in Erra: ḥarr, fierce heat, from which ḥarrān, thirsty, one whose liver is dried up by heat; and ḥarrah, ground strewn with black, crumbling stones as though burned with fire. On this reading Erra is the heat that burns and the scorched ground it leaves behind.

The essay's readings

The Babylonian essay gives ʾarra as its first reading, with the sense of burning and kindling. The dictionaries give ʾarra other senses and no fire, so the burning the essay intends comes from ḥ-r-r, and the glottal stop of ʾarra is what remained of the ḥ in Akkadian writing.

Its second reading is ʿarra: in Lane ʿurr is mange, camels ʿarrat when struck by it, and mange ʿarra al-badan when it attacked the body. Akkadian drops ʿ and leaves the same e, so the letters cannot decide between ḥ and ʿ here. What favours ḥ is that Erra's first titles are war and fire; ʿ remains a reading that fits his plague side. The essay adds a third, harra, to snarl and show hostility, with h changed to a glottal stop.

"In heaven I am a wild bull, on earth a lion"

In his boast Erra says: ina šamê rīmāku ina erṣeti labbāku, "in heaven I am a wild bull, on earth I am a lion". Šamû is Arabic samāʾ, sky: Arabic s is š in Akkadian, as in salām and šalāmu. Erṣetu is arḍ, earth, with ḍ as ṣ. Rīmu is riʾm, in Lane the pure white antelope, and in Hebrew rʾēm, the wild ox. Labbu is labūʾ, a lion in Lane, whence labuʾa, lioness. In the Arabic tongue the line is "in the sky I am a riʾm, on the earth a labūʾ", a reading proposed on the method in which the animals keep their kind while their species shifts between the branches.

Historical Context

Erra first appears as an element of personal names in southern Mesopotamia in the Sargonic period, about 2390–2210 BCE, and from that time he is linked with Nergal. In a hymn to Inanna containing prayers for King Ur-Ninurta, Enlil tells the king to be "like the warrior Erra". In the first millennium he appears in scholarly and literary texts from the Neo-Assyrian to the Seleucid period, and late omens from Uruk use the phrase "Erra will devour the land" for a coming plague. No image of him is known.

Family and connections

Key Mythic Narratives

Erra and Nergal

In the Sumerian hymn B to Nergal "Erra welcomed his king" Nergal, so there they are two figures, though ORACC thinks the broken text leaves this open, while the late Babylonian version of Nergal and Ereshkigal uses the name Erra in place of Nergal. In Erra and Išum Erra says of himself: "when I enter the steppe, I take up residence as Nergal". The two draw so close that they exchange names, while each keeps his face: Nergal the king of the dead below, Erra the warrior who burns above the earth.

The poem as amulet

The poem's ending says that Erra revealed it to its author in a dream and that it is a sign from him, which gave it protective power. Some copies were written on amulets, and Besnier thinks their owners carried them as protection against violence and ruin. The poem that tells of Erra's anger became itself a guard against that anger.

Symbolic Reading

The Babylonian essay reads Erra and Išum as saying that plague and ruin spread when order is absent: Erra unleashes destruction on Babylon when Marduk leaves his place. ORACC reads the poem in a similar way, as a poetic picture of the eruption of violence and what it does to a society, written by a poet who seems to have lived through the bloody invasions that passed over Babylonia between the thirteenth and the ninth centuries BCE.

The poem sets two lives clearly against each other. The Seven despise the city, its bread, its beer and its palaces, and praise the cake baked in embers, the water of the waterskin and the shepherd's hut: going to war is for them "like a festival" of manhood. They even turn people's complaints into arguments for war: the farmer weeps over his land, the shepherd cannot sleep for his flock, the pastures are trodden by cattle. The end of the poem shows who pays: ruined cities, and Marduk weeping for Babylon "which the wind has scorched". Burning in the poem is what an army leaves behind it, scorched land and hunger, the very sense Roberts reads in the name itself.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The Babylonian essay sets Erra beside the Canaanite Resheph, god of plague and war, beside the plague arrows of Apollo, beside the Indian Rudra, and beside Surtr, the Norse fire giant. Erra, Resheph and Rudra share a fear answered with offerings: Resheph receives offerings so that he holds back his arrows, Rudra is begged to turn his weapon away from people and cattle, and Erra's poem is carried as an amulet to protect its owner. Erra comes close to Surtr in the fire that eats the land, but Surtr's fire at the end of time burns the whole world, while Erra's burns the cities of Babylonia and then subsides.

In the poem Marduk remembers that once he rose from his throne and the flood came, and Erra is moved by what moved Enlil to the flood in Atrahasis: the noise of humankind that keeps the gods from sleep.

The Babylonian essay pairs Erra with the Egyptian Sekhmet, the Eye Ra sent to kill mankind and then made drunk on red beer until she came back gracious, as Išum calms Erra; Amenhotep III appeased her with hundreds of statues to keep the king from illness, as Erra's poem became an amulet, in Sekhmet.