above (reigned till c.
lloO). Asstir-rish-ishi, son of
above. Tuklal-pal-i.tharra I.
(Tiglatli-pile.ser), son
of above. Assur-bfl-kala, son of
above. Sams't-IiammSn, brother
of above. Assur-nazir-pal II.. son
of above (c. B.C. 1050).
While at the beginning of this period (c. B.C. 1400) Babylonia had .still the supremacy in the Kuphrates and 'I'igi'is districts, and aspiring As.syria possessed in Mitanni a powerful and dangerous rival, in a few centuries the picture was totally changed. As early as the reign of Kammaii- nirari I., who has given us the first long royal inscriiitioii that we pos.se.ss, Assyria commenced the upward marcji wliieli was afterwards so steadily maintained, and the campaigns of Tiglath-pileser I, laid the fciuiidatioii of the great world-empire which A.ssyria became in later times.
As.iur-nhatlit' I. is well known to u.s from a letter whicli he wrote to the I'haraoh Anien- hotep (Amenciphis) IV. expressing his allegiance to him, in which he describes hini.self as the son of Assui-nadin-akhi. lie is also distingiiished for his energetic atlem)it to secure, by family relation- ships, the right of interference in the affairs of
• Or Asiir-iitmlllt, or Aslinr-iibdlllt. Thp Assyrlnns noinftlines .'»|K'U the imine of tlii-fr iintlonn) ffi»\ A)»!*iir, find soinctlmcH Asnr. 1 hi' sibilant Ih [>roj><?rly itronounccd sh, but wns very varly pro- nounced H In Asj*vrifi, In contraill.itlnctlon to Hatiylonla.
Mardnk-shapik-zirim. . Mamman-pal-idina.
Babylon. The Bab. crown prince Kara-khardaa had become his son-in-law. Assur-uballit lived to see not only his accession to the throne, but also the accession of his grandson luidashman-kharbi.
The last-named, however, Wiis overthrown by the Kassites, who were then predominant in Babylon, because the interference of his royal As.syr. motlier MubaUitat-nhertia and of his grandfatlier proved dangerous to them. The murderers of KadnKltman- kharbi placed a certain Suziijas (or, according to another tradition, Nazihuijas) upon the throne in his stead. But the aged Assur-uballit did not allow him to be unavenged. He got Suzigas put to death, and placed his own great-grandson, Knrirjalzu, who was still a minor, upon the throne. The last-nameil king, who reigned c. 50 years, came into conflict with two As.syr. kings, liel-nirari and his grand.son linrninnn-niriiri, about the posses- sion of a portion of Mesopotamia.
Under Assur-ubaUil and his grandson Pudu-ilu, the As.syrians succeeded in freeing themselves from the suzerainty of the kings of Mitanni. TuxhratUi,* the powerful king of Mitanni, wlio -was the con- temjiovary of .-Xssnr-nadin-akhi (the father of As.sur- uballit), as well as of Assur-uballit himself, lent the image of Istar of Nineveh to Egypt, obviously in order that his daughter, who was married to the Pharaoh, might be able by its help to practise her native cultiis. The natural infer- ence is that A.ssyria was then a mere vassal state of Mitanni, and that Nineveh had become, to say the very least, the common Istar sanctuary for both Mitanni and Assyria. In tlie language nf Mitanni, which is a Ilittite and not a Semitic dialect, Istar of Nineveh is called ShaUispi ; and Sargon, 700 years later, lifted up his hands to 'Sha'uspi, the ruler of Nineveh' (Cylinder Inscriji. 1. 04), tlius calling Istar by a name which reminds us of the times of Tiishratta. Now it is expre.ssly stated that Asniir-nballit destroyed the military forces of the extensive region of Shubari (i.e. Mesopotamia), and that Pudu-ilu not only subju- gated the mountaineers of Guti (Arrapachilis), but al.so defeated the Akhlami and Sutieans, the pre- datory nomads of Mesopotamia. These territories, however, in the days of Taluitines III. were under the absolute and uncontrolled rule of the inde- pendent kings of Arrapach and Mitanni. We may regard it as almost certain, that even in the days of Bel-niriiri the once powerful Mitainii was overthrown liy the sudden attacks of these Sutieans, a result which was heartily welcomed by the as])iring Assur.
liumman-niriin /., in the inscription mentioned above, briefly recounts all these events in the reigns of his tJiree immediate predecessors, in order to relate how he rebuilt the towns which had been destroyed in (he previous wars which devastated the territories on the east and west of Assyria. Owing to the fact that the land of the Guti ((ioiim, (in 14) had been overthrown by his predecessors, some boundary disputes arose with Babylonia, since the territoi-y in que.stion had formerly been within the Bab. sphere of influence.t The Bab. king Nazi-Mara<ldash, however, was con(|uered by Kani- man-nirari, and compelled to consent to a fresh delimitation of the boundaries, more favourable to Assyria.
Under the rule of his son Slialman-AslKirid (Shalmaneser) /., r. It.c. l.'iOO, Assyria made an im- portant advance. This king undertook a whole series of canii)aigns against the mountainous regions to
• Son of Sntarnn. who waft the son of Artjitaina, a contempo- rary of tlio IMiaraoli 'I'alintini-h iv. Ta)lUtIn('^ iv. was ri'Iali-*! bv ' marrlaec lo the kines of Mitanni. An elder brother of Tushrattn. who dle<l early, wa;* called .Artji-ithilniara.
+ There existt* an Insciiptlon of a klnt' of (Jutl. written in old Bab. eunetform charaeterH, which vlvldlv calls to mind the eni of old Sarffon of .\(,'ude, 0. U.C. 8700.
182
ASSYRIA
ASSYRIA
the north of Mesopotamia, between the modern Diarbekr and Malatiyeh, advancing into the in- terior of Western Armenia as far as tlie country which is often called in the cuneiform inscriptions itlitsri (Musur-dagh on the Upper Euphrates). It is interesting to note that North Mesopotamia, near the mountains of Masius (Assyrian, nits, of Kasyar), is always called the land of Arimi or the Aramceans, not only in the inscriptions of Shalman- eser I. himself, but also in a later account of the campaign, which dates from the time of Assur- nazir-pal II. We naturally compare with this the biblical derivation of the four peoples, Uz, Hul, Gelher, and Mash (this latter = Mt. MasiiLs), from Aram (Gn 10-^) . As a matter of fact, shortly before the reign of Shalmaneser, the Aramiean nomads must have been driven away from the Bab.-Elamite frontier (the bil)lical Kir, Am 9', cf. Is 22'', Kir near Elam), their original home, into Mesopotamia. The A/chlami too (after whom a stone in the breast- plate of the Heb. priests was called Akhlamah, Ex 28'^), who were conquered by Pudu-ilu, are expressly stated by Tiglatb-pileser I. to have been Aramseans. Shalmaneser I. took from the Bab. king Kadash- mnn-buriash several towns in the district of Dur-Kurigalzu (near the modern Baghdad). He wished, too, to be regarded as a builder. He laid the foundation of a new residence Kalakh (Gn 10'-), Assur having up to this time been the capital town, and built afresh the sanctuary of Istar in Nineveh, which Assur-uballit had only very roughly restored. And, finally, it is worth remarking that he was the first Assyr. king who assumed the title ' Kiug of the World ' (sar kissati) on his inscrip- tions, a circumstance which obviously stands in special relation to the conquest of Mesopotamia, and more particularly to the acquisition of the primitive sanctuary-town Harran.