<!---Can anyone add a translation from Rabisu in English into hebrew?--->
In Akkadian mythology the Rabisu ("the lurker"; Sumerian Maškim, "deputy, attorney"), or possibly Rabasa, are vampiric spirits, daimons, or demons. The Rabisu are associated in mythology with the Curse of Akkad. A consistent translation of "Rabisu" is "Lingerers". The Rabisu, whether intending malicious actions or not, linger around those who have been found wayward or to be rewarded by the deity Enlil.
Description
The spirit identified by the Akkadians as "Rabisu" is not an inherently evil spirit. Despite the Hebrew Bible referring to demons as evil by nature, the demonology expressed by the Akkadians suggests that Rabisu, rather than being an entity of evil, was "a neutral being that is nothing other than a current of wind dispatched by the deities to perform certain duties". Rather, the Rabisu was a spirit sent out to correct the transgressions committed by humans.
The Curse of Akkad
The Curse of Akkad, also known as The Curse of Agade, is a story told by Sumerians during the Third Dynasty of Ur (2047-1750BCE) about the Akkadian king Naram-Sin who was the grandson and successor of Sargon the Great. Sometimes the Curse is described as Naram-Sin's fight with Enlil. Naram-Sin had grown discontent with himself and blamed the gods for not providing relief from his sorrows. Naram-Sin took up arms against Enlil who, in turn, sent the Rabisu to correct Naram-Sin's transgressions. The story ends with the complete destruction of the city of Akkad, Enlil triumphing over the earthly human domain. This story can be read in the context of the Rabisu as the enforcers of divine will.
Myth of Ubar
The story of the Curse of Akkad is similar to a myth of the "lost city" of Ubar, sometimes referred to as "Atlantis of the Sands", located farther to the south in southeastern Oman. The Rabisu were noted to operate as a flock or unit, as opposed to individual spirits. It was believed that Enlil would send "flocks" of Rabisu in the form of storms of wind, sometimes carrying dust or sand storms.
Myths of the Rabiru as lingerers or lurkers may have inspired the title of The Lurker at the Threshold a horror novel by August Derleth.
In 2021, Supermassive Games released House of Ashes, an interactive drama horror video game set during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A squad of American Marines find themselves trapped in an ancient Mesopotamian temple after a raid on a local village in search of weapons goes awry. Concurrently, bat-like vampiric creatures awaken from their millennia-long slumber to roam the temple and stalk and terrorize their newfound human prey.
Scholarship
The idea of the Rabisu (Akkadian) or Robes (Hebrew) as evil spirits first began in a series of books published in 1903–1904 by Assyriologist Reginald Campbell Thompson. Thompson portrayed the Rabisu as an evil spirit in the seventeenth volume of Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets and the two-volume series Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia. This caused substantive debate and is still contested by scholars today.
In 1903, the claim that the Rabisu was an evil, demonic spirit was contested by Hans Duhm in Die bösen Geister im Alten Testament in which he and Assyriologist Charles-Francois Jean were able to compare Hebrew texts to Akkadian demonology to attest that the Rabisu was not a predatory being. In this literature, despite the assertion that the Rabisu was not evil, the entity was still referred to as a "demon" in some classifications. Some have stuck to this notion without question. Duhm's assertion has also been challenged from multiple angles. Others who interpreted the Hebrew Bible also reached a separate conclusion that Rovetz ("lurking, crouching" in Hebrew) is not the same entity or in some cases not even the same religion as the spirit of the Rabisu (Akkadian Demon).
One of the main reasons people often consider the Rabisu intrinsically evil is because of modern connotations of the word "demon". In ancient theology, a daimon had both an intrinsically evil and intrinsically good dichotomy; in vernacular usage, however, a "demon" is often assumed to be evil or malicious. It is also understood by modern translation that the Rabisu did not act without divine authority. That is, unless Enlil and his heavenly counsel specifically told or commanded the Rabisu to do something, they would not. Rather, they remained neutral spirits existing between the planes of heaven and earth.