The Epic or Erra and its position in Mesopotamien literature (working title)

• Applicant: Dr. Frauke Weiershäuser
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: from 2013 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 242026167

The aim of this project is a new edition of the so called Epic of Erra including a comprehensive study of the contents of this text with particular attention to its relation to other Mesopotamian literary compositions.The Epic of Erra describes in great detail and in a language rich in images the destructive effect of the rage of Erra, god of war and plague. Thus it is a literary form of coping with the results of war and disaster. The text, covering five cuneiform tablets and written in the first part of the first millennium BC, is the youngest of the major Assyro-Babylonian literary compositions. To date only partial interpretations of the contents have been submitted, not least because of the partly fragmentary state of preservation of the text.In this project, the Epic of Erra will be presented in a modern critical edition including a philological commentary, glossary, indices and plates with the copies of the cuneiform tablets. Hitherto unpublished fragments will be included and therefore the extent of the text known to us will be enlarged. A thorough analysis of the contents will form the second part of the project. This analysis will focus on the intertextual references between the Epic of Erra and other literary texts of different genres. The preoccupation with a literary text with special regards to intertextuality is a methodical approach that was hitherto rarely followed in the study of the literary works of the Ancient Near East. Focussing on the question of intertextuality in the analysis will lead to a deeper understanding of this extraordinary text and will provide new insight into the Mesopotamian history of literature and ideas of the first millennium BC.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants