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A late ruler of Babylon Shamash-shumukin calls her the queen of the gods, and declares himself to have been nominated by her to lord it over men. A factor in this amalgamation of Erua and Sarpanitum was the close association brought about in Babylon between Marduk and a god whose seat was originally at the Persian Gulf Ea.
The cult of this god, as we shall see, survived in Babylonia through all political vicissitudes, and so did that of some other minor water-deities that belong to this region. Among these was Erua, whose worship centered in one of the islands in or near the gulf. Wisdom and the life-giving principle were two ideas associated in the Babylonian mind with water.
Tashmitum. The name Tashmitum appears for the first time in the days of Hammurabi. Attention has already been called to the king's ignoring of the god of Borsippa. While his attempt to suppress the cult of Nabu was not successful, he did succeed in causing the old consort of Nabu to disappear. This consort appears to have been no other than Erua.
It rarely happens that all the links in such a process are preserved, but in this case, the epithets borne by Sarpanitum-Erua, such as 'lady of the deep, 'mistress of the place where the fish dwell, 'voice of the deep, point the way towards the solution of the problem involved in the amalgamation of Erua and Sarpanitum. Nabu.
As inferior in power to Ea, Erua appears to have been regarded as the daughter of Ea, and such was the sway exercised by Ea over men's minds, that even the Babylonian schoolmen did not venture to place Marduk over Ea, but pictured him as Ea's son. Erua, however, was not prominent enough to become Marduk's mother, and so she was regarded as his consort.
Exactly to what class of deities she belonged, we are no longer able to say, but it is certain that at some time, probably about the time of Hammurabi, an amalgamation took place between her and another goddess known as Erua, a name that etymologically suggests the idea of 'begetting. She is represented as dwelling in the temple of E-Zida at Borsippa, and was originally the consort of Nabu, the chief god of this place.
So Delitzsch, Beiträge sur Assyriologie, ii. 623. The first part of the name is also used to designate the 'young bullock, and it is possible, therefore, that the god was pictured in this way, as both Anu and Sin are occasionally called 'bulls. Louvre Inscription II, col ii. ll. 12-17. There is also a goddess Eria worshipped in Elam, who may be identical with Erua.
It will be recalled that up to very late times the tradition survived that her dwelling-place was Borsippa. This is never said of Sarpanitum. Despite, therefore, the amalgamation of Sarpanitum and Erua, the association of the latter with Nabu's dwelling-place remains impressed upon the memory of the Babylonian scholars, at least.
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