Kabti-ilāni-Marduk
c. 750 BCE · Babylon
Kabti-ilāni-Marduk is the named author of the Akkadian Poem of Erra, the five-tablet work in which the violent god Erra is roused to devastate Babylonia until his vizier Išum calms him. In a closing passage the poem itself names Kabti-ilāni-Marduk, of the Dabibi family, declaring that the composition came to him entire in a dream at night — one of the very few Mesopotamian literary works to name its author. Beyond this self-naming little is securely known of him, and the poem's date (often placed around the 8th century BCE) is debated.
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One of the rare ancient authors who signed his work
The Poem of Erra, a Babylonian composition usually dated to around the 8th century BCE, names its own author in its closing lines — the scribe Kabti-ilāni-Marduk. By the poem's own account, the work came to him in a dream at night, and he set it down without omitting a word. Either way, he is one of the very few ancient Mesopotamian authors preserved by name at all, since most of the literature is anonymous.
How we know
Kabti-ilāni-Marduk, named author of the Poem of Erra (Erra and Ishum), floruit c. 8th century BCE (von Soden's early-8th-c. dating; range debated); dream-revelation and self-naming stated in the poem's colophon (Britannica; Encyclopedia.com).
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Babylon
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About Babylon
The great city on the Euphrates that gave its name to Babylonia, capital under Hammurabi and again under the Neo-Babylonian kings. The pin marks the findspot of the excavated tablet.
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