ERDÉLYI, JÁNOS (1814-1868), Hungarian poet and author, was born in 1814 at Kapos, in the county of Ungvár, and educated at the Protestant college of Sárospatak. In 1833 he removed to Pest, where he was, in 1839, elected member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His literary fame was made by his collection of Hungarian national poems and folk-tales, Magyar Népköltési Gyüjtemény, Népdalok és Mondák (Pest, 1846-1847). This work, published by the Kisfaludy Society, was supplemented by a dissertation upon Hungarian national poetry, afterwards partially translated into German by Stier (Berlin, 1851). Erdélyi also compiled for the Kisfaludy Society an extensive collection of Hungarian proverbs—Magyar Közmondások könyve (Pest, 1851),—and was for some time editor of the Szépirodalmi Szemle (Review of Polite Literature). In 1848 he was appointed director of the national theatre at Pest; but after 1849 he resided at his native town. He died on the 23rd of January 1868. A collection of folklore was published the year after his death, entitled A Nép Koltészete népdalok, népmesék és közmondások (Pest, 1869). This work contains 300 national songs, 19 folk-tales and 7362 Hungarian proverbs.
ERDMANN, JOHANN EDUARD (1805-1892), German philosophical writer, was born at Wolmar in Livonia on the 13th of June 1805. He studied theology at Dorpat and afterwards at Berlin, where he fell under the influence of Hegel. From 1829 to 1832 he was a minister of religion in his native town. Afterwards he devoted himself to philosophy, and qualified in that subject at Berlin in 1834. In 1836 he was professor-extraordinary at Halle, became full professor in 1839, and died there on the 12th of June 1892. He published many philosophical text-books and treatises, and a number of sermons; but his chief claim to remembrance rests on his elaborate Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (2 vols., 1866), the 3rd edition of which has been translated into English. Erdmann’s special merit is that he does not rest content with being a mere summarizer of opinions, but tries to exhibit the history of human thought as a continuous and ever-developing effort to solve the great speculative problems with which man has been confronted in all ages. His chief other works were: Leib und Seele (1837), Grundriss der Psychologie (1840), Grundriss der Logik und Metaphysik (1841), and Psychologische Briefe (1851).
ERDMANN, OTTO LINNÉ (1804-1869), German chemist, son of Karl Gottfried Erdmann (1774-1835), the physician who introduced vaccination into Saxony, was born at Dresden on the 11th of April 1804. In 1820 he began to attend the medico-chirurgical academy of his native place, and in 1822 he entered the university of Leipzig where in 1827 he became extraordinary professor, and in 1830 ordinary professor of chemistry. This office he held until his death, which happened at Leipzig on the 9th of October 1869. He was particularly successful as a teacher, and the laboratory established at Leipzig under his direction in 1843 was long regarded as a model institution. As an investigator he is best known for his work on nickel and indigo and other dye-stuffs. With R.F. Marchand (1813-1850) he also carried out a number of determinations of atomic weights. In 1828, in conjunction with A.F.G. Werther (1815-1869), he founded the Journal für technische und ökonomische Chemie, which became in 1834 the Journal für praktische Chemie. He was also the author of Über das Nickel (1827), Lehrbuch der Chemie (1828), Grundriss der Waarenkunde (1833), and Über das Studium der Chemie (1861).
EREBUS, in Greek mythology, son (according to Hesiod, Theog. 123) of Chaos, and father of Aether (upper air) and Hemera (day) by his sister Nyx (night). The word, which signifies darkness, is in Homer the gloomy subterranean region through which the departed shades pass into Hades. The entrance to it was in the extreme west, on the borders of Ocean, in the mythical land of the Cimmerians. It is to be distinguished from Tartarus, the place of punishment for the wicked.
ERECH (Uruk in the Babylonian inscriptions; Gr. Orchoë), the Biblical name of an ancient city of Babylonia, situated E. of the present bed of the Euphrates, on the line of the ancient Nil canal, in a region of marshes, about 140 m. S.S.E. from Bagdad. It was one of the oldest and most important cities of Babylonia, and the site of a famous temple, called E-Anna, dedicated to the worship of Nana, or Ishtar. Erech played a very important part in the political history of the country from an early time, exercising hegemony in Babylonia at a period before the time of Sargon. Later it was prominent in the national struggles of the Babylonians against Elam (2000 B.C. and earlier), in which it suffered severely; recollections of these conflicts are embodied in the Gilgamesh epic, as it has come down to us through the library of Assur-bani-pal. Erech enjoyed much distinction in the later times, as a seat of learning and of the worship of Ishtar, and Assur-bani-pal drew largely on its literary stores for his library at Nineveh, from which we derive our principal information concerning ancient Babylonian literature. The inscriptions found here show that it continued in existence through the Persian and Seleucid periods. The ruins of the ancient site, known as Warka, which are among the largest in all Babylonia, forming an irregular circle nearly 6 m. in circumference, bounded by a wall, still standing in some places to the height of 40 ft., were explored and partially excavated by W.K. Loftus in 1850 and 1854. The most conspicuous ruin, now called Abu-Berdi, “Father of Marsh Grass,” or Buwariye, “reed matting,” because of the layers of reeds between each twelve courses of unbaked brick, is the ziggurat (tower) of the ancient temple of E-Anna. It is about 100 ft. in height, and strikingly resembles in general appearance the ruins of the ziggurat of the temple of Enlil at Nippur. Second to this in size was the ruin called Wuswas, a walled quadrangle, including an area of more than seven and a half acres, within which was an edifice 246 ft. long and 174 ft. wide, elevated on an artificial platform 50 ft. in height. The south-west façade, still standing in some places to the height of 23 ft., exhibited an interesting use of half columns, and stepped recesses for purposes of decoration. In another ruin Loftus found a wall, 30 ft. long, composed entirely of small yellow terra-cotta nail-headed cones, such as have been discovered in great numbers, inscribed and uninscribed, used for votive purposes in connexion with walls at Tello and elsewhere in Babylonia. His excavations being superficial, the Babylonian inscriptions found by him, about one hundred in all, exclusive of the ancient Ur-Gur bricks from the temple, belong in general to the neo-Babylonian, Persian and Seleucid periods. The older remains are buried deep beneath the huge mass of later debris. Loftus also discovered at Erech, almost everywhere within and without the walls, great numbers of clay coffins, piled one above another, to the height of over 30 ft., forming a vast and, on the whole, well-ordered cemetery belonging to the Persian, Parthian and later occupations of Babylonia, during which period Erech, like other cities of the south, evidently became a necropolis for a large extent of country. After Loftus’s time the mounds were visited by various travellers, but no further excavations have been conducted. Work on this important part of the site is attended with very great difficulties, owing to the inaccessible position of the ruins, the unsettled character of the country, the frequent sand-storms, and above all, the immense mass of material of later periods which must be removed before a systematic excavation of the more ancient and interesting ruins could be undertaken. A curious feature of the Warka neighbourhood is the existence of conical sand-hills, rising to a considerable height, so compact as to be almost like stone. These hills extend from Warka northward as far as Tel Ede.
See W.K. Loftus, Chaldaea and Susiana (1857); J.P. Peters, Nippur (1897); E. Sachau, Am Euphrat und Tigris (1900). Cf. also [Nippur] and authorities there quoted.