[ca. 1741-1300 B.C.]
The city of Asshur was originally a patesi-ship. The situation of Asshur seems to point to a close connection with Babylonia rather than with northern Mesopotamia, and for the present, at least, it seems most likely that we ought to regard it as a vassal state to Babylonia or the Kingdom of the Four Quarters of the World. Nor must we ignore the possibility that it may have formed part of the realm of the “Kishshati.”
A record left by an Assyrian king enables us to determine one point of time, at least, when Asshur was still a dependency and ruled by a patesi. Tiglathpileser I built that part of the great temple of Asshur which was intended for the worship of the gods Anu and Ramman (Adad), and in the record he has left he observes that this temple was built by the patesi Shamshi-Adad, the son of Ishme-Dagan, patesi of Asshur, six hundred and forty-one years before the reign of his own great-grandfather Asshur-dan, sixty years earlier. Accordingly Asshur must have been ruled by patesis sixty plus six hundred and forty-one years before 1100, when Tiglathpileser was on the throne, and its exaltation to the rank of a kingdom must have taken place later than that. The names of two patesis of Asshur and those of their fathers are known to us from inscriptions of their own. One of them, Shamshi-Adad, and his father, Igur-Kapkapu, we may place before or after Shamshi, the son of Ishme-Dagan, with equal probability, while the form of the other two names, Irishum and his father Khallu, being simple and exhibiting nothing of the compound character of later Assyrian names, leads us to conjecture that they belong to an earlier period.
The names of these six patesis and their work in the building of the temple of Asshur represent our whole stock of knowledge concerning Asshur before it rose to be a royal city. The first king of Assyria of whom we know anything is Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, who is introduced to us by the Synchronistic History as a contemporary of the Kossæan[22] king Karaindash of Babylon. As this monarch reigned some time about the first half of the fifteenth century B.C., there is an interval of over three hundred years between him and the patesi Shamshi-Adad, an interval of which we know nothing except that the rise of Asshur and the establishment of the kingdom of Assyria must fall within it. Of the circumstances and conditions under which these events took place we know nothing in detail, but an explanation naturally suggests itself from the state of Babylonia. During this same period Babylonia had sunk to such a depth of decrepitude that her own strength was no longer adequate to secure her against hordes of invaders, and she could continue to exist only under the protection of the Kossæan kings and their armies. These disorders, which inevitably attend such a state of things, served, as they invariably do in the East, to promote the formation of new states under energetic and enterprising leaders, and to these circumstances the kingdom of Asshur probably owed its rise.
From the reign of Shalmaneser I (circa 1300) onwards the kings of Assyria bear the title of “Shar Kishshati” and even place it before that of “King of Asshur.” “Shar Kishshati” means “King of the World,” and the title is thus formed in the same fashion as the Babylonian “King of the Four Quarters of the World.” And the Assyrian title, like the Babylonian, was not merely general in scope, but was bound up with the possession of a particular district and particular cities.
It is doubtful whether Assyria subdued the kingdom of the Kishshati from the outset, or gained possession of it at a later period. According to the scanty records at present open to us, the latter hypothesis seems the more probable. The first Assyrian king to bear the title of “Shar Kishshati” is Shalmaneser I (about 1300), and he gives it to his father, Adad-nirari I (or Ramman-nirari), although the latter does not assume it in his own inscription. Shalmaneser attaches so much weight to this title that on a couple of bricks, which date from his reign, he actually styles himself “King of Kishshati” alone, and omits the royal title of Assyria; and we therefore may conclude that the union of northern Mesopotamia and Assyria was the work of Adad-nirari and of Shalmaneser.
This would be at least one fixed point in the earliest history of Assyria from which to trace the development of the empire. Before Shalmaneser we have to do only with the little kingdom of Asshur, which was chiefly engaged in struggles with Babylonia and its eastern neighbours, and after his time with the united dominions of Assyria and northern Mesopotamia, the leading power of Mesopotamian civilisation against the West and the attacks of barbarians on every side. The Synchronistic History is our principal guide to Assyrian history, as it was to the history of Babylonia before it came into touch with Assyria. We have but few inscriptions of the kings of this early stage of Assyria’s existence, and only by the aid of the above-mentioned document can we more or less connectedly trace the course of history. Before the reign of Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, at which the chronicle now begins, we can be sure of nothing but a great blank.
[ca. 1450-1325 B.C.]
With Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, who reigned in the first half of the fifteenth century, begins a line of kings with a certain degree of continuity. Of himself we only know what is told in the Synchronistic History, namely, that he concluded an alliance with Karaindash of Babylon by which they guaranteed one another in possession of their dominions. He was presently—though perhaps not immediately—succeeded by Puzur-Asshur [probably about 1420 B.C.] of whom we are told the same thing. He entered into friendly alliance with Burna-buriash.
Of his supposed successor, Asshur-nadin-akhe, we know, from the letters of his son Asshur-uballit to Amenhotep IV, that he, like his Babylonian contemporary, held communication with the kings of Egypt. In an inscription of a later king mention is made of a building of his, the foundation of a palace at Asshur. For the rest, it is by no means impossible that he may have reigned before Puzur-Asshur, and that the latter, as well as Asshur-uballit, was his son.