He was described as the son or descendant of Marduk-šakin-šumi, an otherwise unknown individual who one might speculate to have been one of the five unknown kings from the earlier period of interregnum. According to the
Dynastic Chronicle, Erība-Marduk was the single member of a dynasty of the Sealand (kur
A.AB.BA) and succeeded
Marduk-apla-uṣur, the first king clearly identified as Chaldean. He was eventually succeeded by
Nabû-šuma-iškun, the sequence of these three kings confirmed by a fragment of an
Assyrian
Synchronistic Kinglist. There are legal documents dated to his ninth year and to the thirteenth year of his successor, which has led historians to conclude that he must have ascended the throne by 770 BC at the latest, as his successor is known to have ruled until 748 BC. The legal document dated to his ninth year records the sale of a large expanse of grazing land, , "the field of the house of the farmer". The land apparently bordered property belonging to an
Aramean sheikh, or
nasīku, evidence of permanent settlement rather than opportunistic raiding by this tribal group. He participated in the
Akītu, or new year festival, first in the beginning of the second year of his reign, as his rule extended into northern Babylonia and he suppressed the incursions of nomads around Babylon and
Borsippa, restoring fields and orchards to their former owners. His religious devotions included restoring
Marduk's throne in the
Esagila in Babylon. An inscription of
Esarhaddon of Assyria (681–669 BC), relates how part of the temple of
Ištar in the Eanna at
Uruk, the shrine of the goddess
Nanaya originally built by
Nazi-Maruttaš in the 13th century, had been restored by Erība-Marduk. Not all restorations, however, were to the liking of his successors. According to the Harran stele of
Nabonidus (555–539 BC), his reign witnessed a sacrilegious reform of the cult of Ištar (
bēltu ša Uruk, "lady of Uruk"), when the people of Uruk replaced her statue with an unsuitable one, unyoking its team of lions and removing its shrine. This may have been part of a program of suppressing the licentious cults of the goddesses in southern Babylonia. The only extant royal inscriptions from his reign are two duck-weights endorsed by Erība-Marduk's palace administration, and a part of a solid clay cylinder thought to be commemorating the inauguration of cultic idols, their decoration and transport upstream on the river
Euphrates to Uruk. ==Inscriptions==