The Reallexikon der Assyriologie in the Babylonian Collection has an entry for Irkalla as "a name of the underworld." So I don't know how the divine-name determinative got in there; perhaps the same way that Hades starts out properly as the name of the god whose house the underworld is, and then later becomes a name for the underworld itself? Only in reverse?
When Odysseus says in Odyssey 10.502 that "no one ever came to Hades' in a dark ship" (εἰς Ἄϊδος δ' οὔ πώ τις ἀφίκετο νηὶ μελαίνῃ), the phrase εἰς Ἄϊδος doesn't mean "to Hades," the god, but "to Hades' [house]." (As in, "I was at Josh's over the weekend," although I'm somewhat doubtful that many people spend their weekends at Hades'. Or at least come back to talk about the experience.) At some point that distinction collapses; the name has passed into English as a word for the underworld or even hell. I don't want to draw too much of a parallel, however; I have no more information about the name Irkalla at the moment, and zero evidence that the phrases "the seat (šubtu, "seat, dwelling, residence") of Irkalla" and "the house of Hades" are related in anything more than an East Face of Helicon "Look! A Near Eastern Parallel! Okay, next one . . ." sort of fashion. But it seemed worth at least mentioning.
And that's what I found in the Reallexikon this afternoon . . .
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When Odysseus says in Odyssey 10.502 that "no one ever came to Hades' in a dark ship" (εἰς Ἄϊδος δ' οὔ πώ τις ἀφίκετο νηὶ μελαίνῃ), the phrase εἰς Ἄϊδος doesn't mean "to Hades," the god, but "to Hades' [house]." (As in, "I was at Josh's over the weekend," although I'm somewhat doubtful that many people spend their weekends at Hades'. Or at least come back to talk about the experience.) At some point that distinction collapses; the name has passed into English as a word for the underworld or even hell. I don't want to draw too much of a parallel, however; I have no more information about the name Irkalla at the moment, and zero evidence that the phrases "the seat (šubtu, "seat, dwelling, residence") of Irkalla" and "the house of Hades" are related in anything more than an East Face of Helicon "Look! A Near Eastern Parallel! Okay, next one . . ." sort of fashion. But it seemed worth at least mentioning.
And that's what I found in the Reallexikon this afternoon . . .