by Eckart Frahm
Two King Lists and the Period after Šamši‐Adad I
Royal inscriptions and archival texts relating to the rulers of the city of Ashur are scanty at best for the 17th–15th centuries BCE, although chronographic sources edited in later periods, such as king lists and chronicles, record a line of kings who ruled the city of Ashur. Sources outside of Ashur do not shed much light on Ashur and its vicinity either, except for a few pieces of circumstantial evidence originating from Hittite Anatolia and from Nuzi (Yorgan Tepe), a town east of Ashur (see below, “Mittanian Dominion”).
Given the lack of detailed contemporary sources, one must consider the political history of Ashur in the post‐Šamši‐Adad I period on the basis of the standard version of the Assyrian King List (Grayson 1980–83: 101–15; hereafter abbreviated as AKL) and another king list fragment from Ashur, KAV 14 (Grayson 1980–83: 115–16). The texts were edited in later periods, and their reliability should be critically checked.
AKL, known from five manuscripts of varying length, covers the long period of Assyrian dynastic history from ancient times down to the Neo‐Assyrian period. Some circumstantial evidence suggests that the present form of the list was established in the 13th century BCE at the latest and then entered a process of periodic updating; the latest surviving exemplars include royal names continuing down to the eighth century BCE. The list describes the period that we are considering, from roughly the mid‐18th to the late 15th centuries BCE, as follows:
(40)2 Išme‐Dagan (I), son of Šamši‐Adad (I), ruled for forty years.
(41) Aššur‐dugul, son of a nobody, (who) had no right to the throne, ruled for six years.
During the time of Aššur‐dugul, son of a nobody, (42) Aššur‐apla‐idi, (43) Naṣir‐Sîn, (44) Sîn‐namir, (45) Ipqi‐Ištar, (46) Adad‐ṣalulu (and) (47) Adasi, six kings, sons of a nobody, each ruled for “(the beginning of) a one‐year period (bāb tuppišu)”.3
(48) Bel‐bani, son of Adasi, ruled for ten years.
(49) Libaya, son of Bel‐bani, ruled for seventeen years.
(50) Šarma‐Adad (I), son of Libaya, ruled for twelve years.
(51) IB.TAR‐Sîn, son of Šarma‐Adad (I), ruled for twelve years.
(52) Bazaya, son of Bel‐bani, ruled for twenty‐eight years.
(53) Lullaya, son of a nobody, ruled for six years.
(54) Kidin‐Ninua,4 son of Bazaya, ruled for fourteen years.
(55) Šarma‐Adad (II), son of Kidin‐Ninua, ruled for three years.
(56) Erišum (III), son of Kidin‐Ninua, ruled for thirteen years.
(57) Šamši‐Adad (II), son of Erišum (III), ruled for six years.
(58) Išme‐Dagan (II), son of Šamši‐Adad (II), ruled for sixteen years.
(59) Šamši‐Adad (III), son of Išme‐Dagan (II?),5 (who was) the brother of Šarma‐Adad (II), son of Kidin‐Ninua, ruled for sixteen years.
(60) Aššur‐nirari (I), son of Išme‐Dagan (II), ruled for twenty‐six years.
(61) Puzur‐Aššur (III), son of Aššur‐nirari (I), ruled for fourteen (var. twenty‐four) years.
(62) Enlil‐naṣir (I), son of Puzur‐Aššur (III), ruled for thirteen years.
(63) Nur‐ili, son of Enlil‐naṣir (I), ruled for twelve years.
(64) Aššur‐šadûni, son of Nur‐ili, ruled one month of days.
(65) Aššur‐rabi (I), son of Enlil‐naṣir, removed [Aššur‐šadûni from the throne]; he took the throne [and ruled for x years].
(66) Aššur‐nadin‐aḫḫe (I), son of Aššur‐rabi (I), [ruled for x years].
(67) Enlil‐naṣir (II), his brother, [removed him] from the throne (and) ruled for six years.
(68) Aššur‐nirari (II), son of Enlil‐naṣir (II), ruled for seven years.
(69) Aššur‐bel‐nišešu, son of Aššur‐nirari (II), ruled for nine years.
(70) Aššur‐rem‐nišešu, son of Aššur‐bel‐nišešu, ruled for eight years.
(71) Aššur‐nadin‐aḫḫe (II), son of Aššur‐rem‐nišešu, ruled for ten years.
According to AKL, Šamši‐Adad I’s dynasty and its rule over Ashur ended with the forty‐year‐long reign of his son, (40) Išme‐Dagan I. However, the “forty,” possibly just a typological number, is suspicious, and its historical reliability is often doubted by scholars. Išme‐Dagan’s grip on Ashur, as well as on his capital Ekallatum, was not very stable, as revealed by letters from Mari; he had to leave and to return to the region several times during the eleven years after the death of Šamši‐Adad I (Charpin and Durand 1997). As stated above, the city of Ashur probably enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy, even under the influence of different external powers in the post‐Šamši‐Adad I period. The six‐year reign of (41) Aššur‐dugul – during which six other individuals (nos. 42–7), perhaps just year eponyms, are said to have ruled briefly – is described in AKL as a period of transition, dominated by illegitimate rulers, “sons of a nobody,” before a stable dynastic line was established under (48) Bel‐bani.
In spite of the reasonable doubt concerning the length of Išme‐Dagan I’s reign, the lengths of the following reigns listed in AKL should be regarded as authentic in principle, since such data probably originate from reliable chronographic records, i.e. eponym lists and chronicles. Chronographic texts that meticulously count the number of years have indeed survived from the Old Assyrian and later periods (Birot 1985, Millard 1994, Barjamovic et al. 2012), suggesting that the same sort of documents were continuously produced in the city of Ashur even during the “dark age” or “transition period.” In contrast, the genealogical data given in AKL for the period from (48) Bel‐bani to (71) Aššur‐nadin‐aḫḫe II (1390–1381 [1400–1391]6) are revealed to be often unreliable, reflecting editorial work using incomplete data during a later period (Landsberger 1954: 42–4; Yamada 2003). Therefore, the dynastic line presented in the pertinent part of AKL must be regarded with some skepticism.
KAV 14 represents a different tradition about the dynasties that allegedly ruled the city of Ashur. The list enumerates three dynasties in historical order, separating them with dividing lines: the native Old Assyrian dynasty preceding Šamši‐Adad I (ll. 1’–3’), the Amorite dynasty of Šamši‐Adad I (ll. 4’–5’), and the subsequent line of the kings of Ashur (ll. 6’ ff.):
(lacuna)
1’. (36) [Puzur]‐Aššur (II), [son of Šarru‐kin(?)]
2’. (37) [Naram]‐Sîn, [son of Puzur‐Aššur (II)(?)]
3’. (38) [Er]išum (II), [son of Naram‐Sîn(?)]
4’. (39) [Š]amši‐Adad (I)
5’. (40a) [Mu]t‐Aškur (40) Išme‐[Dagan (I)]
(40b) Rimu[š]7
6’. (54) [Ki]din‐Ninua
7’. (56) [Er]i[šum (III)]
8’. (58) [Išme‐Da]gan (II)
9’. (60) [Aššur‐nirari (I)]
10’. (62) [Enlil‐naṣir (I)]
11’. (64) [Aššur‐šaduni]
12’. (66) [Aššur‐nadin‐aḫḫe (I)]
13’. (68) [Aššur‐nirari (II)] (55) Šarma‐[Adad (II)]
(57) Šamši‐[Adad (II)]
(59) Šamši‐[Adad (III)]
(61) Puzur‐Aššur (III) [(…)]
(63) Nur‐ili [(…)]
(65) Aššur‐[rabi (I)]
(67) En[lil‐naṣir (II)]
(69) [Aš]šur‐[bel‐nišešu]
(lacuna)
Especially noteworthy is the reference to two names not found in AKL, i.e. [Mu]t‐Aškur and Rimu[š] of the Šamši‐Adad dynasty. Mut‐Aškur is attested in a number of letters from Mari as the son of Išme‐Dagan I. He was old enough in the 1760s BCE to lead an army and to plan to marry a daughter of the king of the Turukkeans (Charpin and Ziegler 2003: 218 and 236). It is thus possible that he later, towards the end of the 18th century BCE, ascended his father’s throne in Ekallatum and ruled the nearby city of Ashur as well. If this is the case, AKL has omitted him and his possible successor(s), who may have ruled Ashur from Ekallatum. However, the possibility
that they ruled only Ekallatum and its vicinity without maintaining control of Ashur cannot be ruled out.
Curiously enough, KAV 14 opens the third dynastic line only with (54) Kidin‐Ninua, omitting thirteen names found before him in AKL, from (41) Aššur‐dugul to (53) Lullaya. One might thus suppose that KAV 14 has a chronological gap covering their reigns, a total of ninety‐one years (according to AKL). It is also possible, however, that KAV 14 preserves a tradition that originated in Ekallatum and listed the kings who had ruled that city, including kings of Ashur who had ruled Ekallatum as well. According to this hypothesis, the reigns of Mut‐Aškur and Rimu[š] could overlap with at least part of the ninety‐one‐year period from (41) Aššur‐dugul to (53) Lullaya in AKL, who ruled only in Ashur.
An inscription of Puzur‐Sîn, a ruler of Ashur who is, oddly, absent from the entire king list tradition, has survived on an alabaster slab from Ashur. This text adds further information of extraordinary significance relating to the post‐Šamši‐Adad I period:
When Puzur‐Sîn, vice‐regent of the god Assur, son of Aššur‐bel‐šamê, destroyed the evil of Asinum, offspring of Šamši‐[Adad] who was … of the city of Ashur, and instituted proper rule for the city of Ashur; (at that time) [I (Puzur‐Sîn) removed] … a foreign plague, not of the flesh of [the city] of Ashur. The god Assur justly … [with] his pure hands and I, by the command of Assur himself my lord, destroyed that improper thing which he had worked on, (namely) the wall and palace of Šamši‐Adad his grandfather (who was) a foreign plague, not of the flesh of the city of Ashur, and who had destroyed the shrines of the city of Ashur. I destroyed that palace … which he had worked on. I built a wall from the façade of the gate of the deity Ilula to the residence, (a structure) which no (other) king had ever built before …
(Grayson 1987: 77–8, A.0.40.1001, ll. 1–35; cf. Galter 2002–05)
Although the translation of the text must remain somewhat tentative because of its poor state of preservation, it apparently describes a dynastic change that occurred in the city of Ashur. It records that Puzur‐Sîn ascended the throne by deposing a certain Asinum, a descendant of Šamši‐Adad. Removing the “alien blood,” he destroyed the wall and the palace of Šamši‐Adad and built a new wall. Šamši‐Adad, whose “non‐Assyrian” extraction is scornfully emphasized in this text, should probably be identified with Šamši‐Adad I, whose foreign Amorite origin is beyond any doubt (Grayson 1985). Puzur‐Sîn obviously considered himself a “genuine Assyrian” who was restoring a native dynasty, customs, and practices to the city‐state of Ashur. J. Reade suggested that the text does not talk about an individual king named Asinum, but rather about an assinnu(m), i.e., an androgynous lower class figure serving a female deity, and that it uses the term as a contemptuous nickname in order to emphasize the sacrilegious behavior of Šamši‐Adad and his family (Reade 2001). Reade proposed identifying the person evicted in the Puzur‐Sîn inscription with Rimu[š], the last of Šamši‐Adad I’s descendants attested in KAV 14.
The reality hidden behind the contradicting details of AKL, KAV 14, and the Puzur‐Sîn inscription remains opaque (Table 5.1). It appears, however, that there were struggles between different parties for the throne of Ashur around the turn of the 18th and 17th centuries BCE. From an ethno‐linguistic viewpoint, three major groups could have been involved in the events. The first were the native Akkadian‐speaking citizens of Ashur, whose view was fully represented in the inscription of Puzur‐Sîn. The second were the Amorites, who were led in this region by the descendants of Šamši‐Adad I, and who presumably ruled with Ekallatum as their capital. There were also the Hurrian‐speaking groups, who had kept some influence over the city of Ashur from the beginning of the second millennium BCE, as suggested by some Hurrian names included in the earlier parts of AKL (Kikkiya, Akiya). It seems that Hurrian influence weakened in the area around Ashur with the Amorite advance in the 18th century BCE. But the Hurrians returned later and were very active in upper Mesopotamia, where they formed the powerful state of Mittani in the 15th century BCE (see below, “Mittanian Dominion”). It is also possible that there was tension between the supporters of different philosophies of kingship. Traditional Assyrian “royal” power was limited and counterbalanced by the civil community, represented by the “city assembly” (ālum) and the “eponym office” (bīt līmim), as seen in the Old Assyrian period. This traditional civil order must have survived into the transition period and may have clashed with the more universal kingship style adopted by the Amorite kingdom of Ekallatum.
Table 5.1 Names of rulers in AKL, KAV 14, and the Puzur‐Sîn inscription
AKL KAV 14 Puzur‐Sîn inscription
(40) Išme‐Dagan I
(41) Aššur‐dugul
(42–47) Aššur‐apla‐idi, Naṣir‐Sîn, Sîn‐namir, Ipqi‐Ištar, Adad‐ṣalulu, Adasi
(48) Bel‐bani
(49) Libaya
(50) Šarma‐Adad (I)
(51) IB.TAR‐Sîn
(52) Bazaya
(53) Lullaya
(54) Kidin‐Ninua
… (40) Išme‐Dagan I
(40a) Mut‐Aškur
(40b) Rimu[š]
(54) Kidin‐Ninua
… Asinum(?)
Puzur‐Sîn
One should ask why Puzur‐Sîn was not considered in the king lists. It is possible that his reign was neglected and/or forgotten with the rise of the prestige of Šamši‐Adad I’s dynasty in Ashur in later times (see below, “Signs of Prosperity”). Or one may explain the omission of Puzur‐Sîn by hypothesizing that AKL has a chronological gap, covering the reign(s) of Mut‐Aškur, Rimu[š], and Puzur‐Sîn, between (40) Išme‐Dagan I and (41) Aššur‐dugul (Landsberger 1954: 36–8). However, one may also propose a totally different hypothesis, which would support a lower chronology: one could postulate that the rulers of Ashur from (41) Aššur‐dugul to (53) Lullaya, who appear in AKL but are omitted from KAV 14, were contemporaneous with the kings of Ekallatum, including (40) Išme‐Dagan I, (40a) Mut‐Aškur, and (40b) Rimu[š], placing Puzur‐Sîn somewhere within this time range (Gasche et al. 1998: 52, Reade 2001: 5–8). Following this line of interpretation, Reade proposed that Puzur‐Sîn be identified with (51) IB.TAR‐Sîn of AKL, assuming that a conscientious scribe was confronted with a damaged pù(KAxŠU)‐zur8 and erroneously restored it as IB.TAR, a name element difficult to explain grammatically; the father of IB.TAR‐Sîn/Puzur‐Sîn is wrongly identified in AKL, according to Reade, as his direct predecessor (52) Šarma‐Adad, based upon an erroneous assumption, instead of the correct Aššur‐bel‐šamê.
Setting apart the question of absolute chronology, whether we follow the middle chronology or a lower one, AKL possibly conceals the reality that the kingship of Ekallatum and Ashur was somehow split in two, with one polity at Ashur and the other at Ekallatum, for some decades after the reign of Išme‐Dagan I. As of right now, however, there are no data to prove the accuracy of any of the aforementioned scenarios.
Signs of Prosperity
The first king mentioned in both AKL and KAV 14 after the divergent passage is (54) Kidin‐Ninua, whose name means “(under) the protection of (the deity of) Nineveh (i.e. Ištar of Nineveh).” This personal name may suggest that the goddess, whose cultic center was Nineveh, the city located ca. 100 kilometers north of Ashur, was worshipped also in Ashur, but the political implications of the name remain obscure. The successors of Kidin‐Ninua assumed a variety of names known from the Old Assyrian period, either native Assyrian names, e.g., Erišum (III), or names related to the Šamši‐Adad dynasty, namely Šamši‐Adad (II) and Išme‐Dagan (II), reflecting the interest of the contemporary royal house in the successful Old Assyrian rulers of the past. Apparently, the prestige of Šamši‐Adad I’s family rose again in Ashur with the end of the bitter dynastic struggles between the Amorites and the native Assyrians in the city.
A certain degree of Assyrian prosperity in the subsequent period, from the latter half of the 16th to the begin
ning of the 15th century BCE, may be reflected by the royal inscriptions of (59) Šamši‐Adad III, (60) Aššur‐nirari I, (61) Puzur‐Aššur III, and (62) Enlil‐naṣir (Grayson 1987: 79–97), which appear after a complete absence of such inscriptions since the Puzur‐Sîn text. The inscriptions, written on bricks, stone tablets, and clay cones, reveal that many buildings first constructed in the Old Assyrian period, among them the Assur temple, the Anu‐Adad temple, the Sîn‐Šamaš temple, the temple of the Assyrian Ištar, and the city walls, were rebuilt during their reigns. (61) Puzur‐Aššur III surrounded a larger area of Ashur with a great wall, as mentioned in a text known from several clay cones of (69) Aššur‐bel‐nišešu (1407–1399 [1417–1409]):
The great wall of the New City which Puzur‐Aššur (III), the prince my forefather, had built – in the area of that wall I built a new wall. I applied a facing to all of it from the great wall of the Inner City as far as the river (Tigris).
(Grayson 1987: 100, A.0.69.1, ll. 5–9)
The statement documents the building of a fortified “New City (ālu eššu)” in addition to the old city that had been established in the Old Assyrian period and was later called the “Inner City (libbi āli).” Further light on the political circumstances of Ashur in the time of (61) Puzur‐Aššur III is cast by a passage in the Synchronistic History, a Neo‐Assyrian composition describing Assyro‐Babylonian relations from the 15th to the beginning of the eighth century BCE:
