Marduk-aḫḫē-erība, inscribed in cuneiform contemporarily as mdAMAR.UTU-ŠEŠ-MEŠ-SU, meaning: “Marduk has replaced the brothers for me,” a designation given to younger sons whose older siblings have typically predeceased them,[2] ruled c. 1042 BC as the 9th king of the 2nd Dynasty of Isin and the 4th Dynasty of Babylon, but only for around 6 months using the date formula: MU1ITI 6,[3] which first appears in Kassite times and is open to interpretation.[b] According to the Synchronistic Kinglist[i 2] he was a contemporary of the Assyrian king Aššur-bêl-kala where only the beginning of his name appears below that of his immediate predecessor Adad-apla-iddina.
| Marduk-aḫḫe-eriba | |
|---|---|
| King of Babylon | |
Hilprecht’s line art for the Marduk-aḫḫē-erība kudurru[i 1]
| |
| Reign | c. 1042 BC[a] |
| Predecessor | Adad-apla-iddina |
| Successor | Marduk-zer-X |
| House | 2nd Dynasty of Isin |
The only contemporary source is a kudurru[i 1] (line art pictured),[4] or gray limestone boundary marker, in a private collection in Istanbul, which records a land grant to a certain Kudurrâ, a “Ḫabiru” and servant of the king, in a region of northern Babylonia called Bīt-Piri’-Amurru.[5] The term Ḫabiru may be a socio-economic designation rather than an indication of "Hebrew" ethnicity, since the name Kudurrâ is possibly not linguistically of semitic derivation. The field was surveyed[c] by a diviner, a scribe named Nabû-ēriš the son of (i.e. descendant of) Arad-Ea, an administrator and a mayor.[6]
It has been suggested that he is the 5th king represented in the Prophecy A[i 3] by the single line, “A prince will arise, and his days will be short. He will not rule in the land.”[7] This is a late Assyrian tablet found at Assur and first published in 1923, which narrates a sequence of 12 Babylonian kings.