Eriba-Adad I

Eriba-Adad, inscribed ^mSU-^dIM or ^mSU-^d10 ("[the god] Adad has replaced"), was king of Assyria from 1392 BC to 1366 BC. His father had been the earlier king Aššur-bel-nišešu, an affiliation attested in brick inscriptions,^{[i 1]} king-lists^{[i 2][i 3]} and a tablet^{[i 4][1]} although a single king list^{[i 5]} gives his father as Aššur-rā’im-nišēšu, probably in error.^[2] He succeeded his nephew, Aššur-nādin-aḫḫe II, being succeeded himself by the rather more prominent king Aššur-uballiṭ I, who was his son. He was the 72nd on the Assyrian King List and ruled for 27 years, his reign being generally considered the start of the middle Assyrian period.

Biography

The circumstances surrounding his accession are unknown, although most nephew-uncle successions recorded in Assyrian history were bloody affairs. He styled himself “regent of Enlil”, the first Assyrian monarch to do so since Šamši-Adad I. His uninscribed royal seal shows a heraldic group which includes two winged griffin-demons flanking a small tree and supporting a winged sun-disc above their wings and a double-headed griffin-demon holding two griffin-demons by their ankles, a radical departure from the earlier style, which was to set a precedent for the later Assyrian glyptic.^[3] It was found impressed into middle Assyrian contract tablets.^{[i 6][i 7][4]}

He probably began his reign as a vassal of Mitanni. However, the Mitanni Empire became entangled in a dynastic battle between Tushratta and his brother Artatama II, and after this, his son Shuttarna II, who called himself king of the Hurri, while seeking support from the Assyrians. A pro-Assur faction appeared at the royal Mitanni court, which enabled Assyria to finally break Mitanni influence upon Assyria, and in turn make Assyria an influence on Mitanni. His son and successor Ashur-uballiṭ I would take full advantage of this and destroy the Mitanni Empire.

Several of the Limmu officials, the noblemen from which the Assyrian Eponym dating system was derived, are known for this period as they date commercial records, but relatively few can be assigned directly to Eriba-Adad's reign rather than that of his successor. One official might be Aššur-muttakil, (the governor of Qabra, a fortress on the lesser Zab), who inherited his position from his father Aššur-dayyān and bequeathed it to his son.^[5] Eriba-Adad I's stela was the earliest of the stelae identified in the Stelenriehe, "row of stelae," the two rows of stone monuments uncovered in Aššur.^[6] The later Assyrian king, Ninurta-apal-Ekur, son of Ilī-padâ, was to claim descent from him in his inscriptions.^[7]

Inscriptions

1. Bricks Ass. 16315 and Ass. 17991.
2. Khorsabad king list, IM 60017 (excavation nos.: DS 828, DS 32-54).
3. SDAS King list, IM 60484,
4. Tablet VAT 9836, copy of a cone inscription commemorating building work.
5. Nassouhi king list, Istanbul A. 116 (Assur 8836),
6. Tablet VAT 9009, Ass. 14446t.
7. Tablet VAT 8804 = KAJ 153.

References

1. A. K. Grayson (1972). Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, Volume I. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. pp. 40–42.
2. J. A. Brinkman (1973). "Comments on the Nasouhi Kinglist and the Assyrian Kinglist Tradition". Orientalia 42: 312.
3. Hans J. Nissen, Peter Heine (2009). From Mesopotamia to Iraq: A Concise History. University Of Chicago Press. pp. 85–86.
4. Joan Aruz, Kim Benzel, Jean M. Evans (2008). Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 211.
5. H. Lewy. Assyria c. 2600–1816 B. C. Cambridge University Press. p. 16.
6. Friedhelm Pedde (2012). "The Assyrian Heartland". In D. T. Potts. A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 854.
7. P. Talon (1998). "Eriba-Adad". In K. Radner. The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Volume 1, Part II: A. The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. p. 400.