The Suteans attacked and the booty of Sumer and Akkad they took home.”[i 3] These attacks were confirmed in an inscription of a later king of the following dynasty, Simbar-šihu, which relates The throne of Ellil in the E-kur-igi-gal which Nabū-kudurri-uṣur, a former king, had fashioned – during the reign of Adad-apla-iddina, king of Bābil, hostile Arameans and Suteans,[d] enemies of the E-kur and of Nippur, they who laid hands on the Duranki, (who) upset in Sippar, the pristine town, the seat of the high judge of the gods, their rites, (who) sacked the land of the Sumerians and the Akkadians, leveled all temples – the goods and the property of Ellil which the Arameans carried off and which the Suteans had appropriated…[8]The Epic of the plague-god Erra, a politico-religious composition from the time of Nabu-apla-iddina, c. 886-853 BC, which endeavors to provide a theological explanation for the resurgence of Babylonia following years of paralysis, begins its tale of distress with the reign of Adad-apla-iddina.
The god Erra, whose name means “scorched (earth),” is accompanied by Išum, "fire," and disease-causing demons called Sibitti.
[9] His reign was celebrated in the first millennium BCE as a golden age for scholarship and he appears twice in the Uruk List of Sages and Scholars[i 5] alongside Šaggil-kīnam-ubbib and Esagil-kin-apli.
Originally with 27 stanzas each of 11 lines, an acrostic has been restored which reads, “I, Šaggil-kīnam-ubbib, the incantation priest, am adorant of the god and the king.”[e] It is extant in multiple copies from the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, Assur, Babylon, and Sippur.
Esagil-kin-apli,[f] the ummânu (chief scholar) and a “prominent citizen” of Borsippa, gathered together the many extant tablets of diagnostic omens and produced the edition that became the received text of the first millennium.
[15] Stamped bricks witness his construction efforts in Babylon[i 10] and to the great Nanna courtyard and in the pavement against the northeast face of the ziggurat at Ur.
He may well have connived to replace Aššur-bêl-kala’s son and successor, Eriba-Adad II, with his uncle, Šamši-Adad IV, who had been in exile in Babylonia.