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The information concerning the last years of the Era of Ishtar comes to us from a number of texts. Put together, they unfold a tale of dramatic and incredible events: the usurpation of supreme pow- ers on Earth by a goddess; the defilement of Enlil's Holy of Holies in Nippur; the penetration of the Fourth Region by a human army; an invasion of Egypt; the appearance of African gods in the Asian domains; acts and occurrences that were unthinkable before; up- heavals among the gods, which served as a stage on which human rulers played out their roles and human blood was spilled without mercy. Faced with the reemergence of her olden adversary, Inanna could simply not give up, no matter what the cost. Seating on Sar- gon's throne first one of his sons and then another, enlisting in her campaigns her vassal kings in the eastern mountainlands, she fought as an enraged lioness for her disintegrating empire, “rain- ing flame over the land . . . attacking like an aggressive storm." "You are known by your destruction of the rebel lands," in- toned a daughter of Sargon in a plaintive poem; "you are known by massacring their people" . . . turning "against the city that said not 'the land is yours,’ " making "its rivers run with blood." For more than two years Inanna wrought havoc all around, until the gods decided that the only way to stop the carnage was to force Marduk back into exile. Having returned to Babylon when Sargon tried to remove some of its hallowed soil—an act whose symbolism was rooted in legendary events—Marduk fortified the city and in particular ingeniously enhanced its underground water system, making the city impervious to attack. Unable or unwilling to re- move Marduk by force, the Anunnaki turned to Marduk's brother Nergal and asked him to "scare Marduk off the divine seat" in Babylon. We know of these events from a text named by scholars The Erra Epos, for in it Nergal is called by the ancient chronicler ER.RA—a somewhat derogatory epithet, for it meant "The Ser- vant of Ra." It is a text that could better be called The Tale of the 251 PRELUDE TO DISASTER