The Poem of Erra
Erra and Ishum
War and plague are explained not as random catastrophe but as the result of a bored, restless god goading a reluctant king of pestilence into unleashing violence the god's own advisor then has to talk him out of.
- divine restlessness and idleness as the root cause of catastrophe
- the god's own weapons as instigators of violence
- self-referential claim to amuletic protective power
- archaeological evidence of the poem used as a physical charm
The war-and-plague god Erra, deliberately idled while Marduk is away having his cult statue cleaned, is provoked by his weapons, the seven Sebitti, into abandoning restraint and devastating Babylon and the wider land with war, plague, and social collapse, a catalogue of violence the poem describes in unusually vivid, almost gleeful detail. Erra's advisor and companion Ishum eventually persuades him to stop, and the poem closes with Erra himself promising prosperity to whoever keeps a copy of the text in their house, an unusual self-referential claim for protective, almost amuletic power that is echoed in the surviving archaeological record of small Erra tablets worn or displayed as charms.
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