Akakharu

(Oak-a-CAH-roo)

Variations: Akakarm, Akakhura, AKHKHARU, Rapganmekhab

An ancient Chaldean epic written in the third millennium B. C. tells the tale of this vampiric REVENANT. When the goddess Ishtar journeyed into the underworld to rescue her son and lover Tammuz, she said aloud, "I will cause the dead to arise and devour the living." And so it came to be that these vampiric lesser demons or semisolid ghosts came into being, seeking human flesh. Interestingly, the word devour originally translated to mean "waste away," as in from an illness.

Source: Cramer, Devil Within, 104; Jones, On the Nightmare, 121; Masters, Eros and Evil, 187