Aššur-nerari III, inscribed
m''aš-šur-''ERIM.GABA, “
Aššur is my help,”
was king of
Assyria
Assyria ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...
(1202–1197 BC or 1193–1187 BC). He was the grandson of
Tukulti-Ninurta I and might have succeeded his uncle or more probably his father
Ashur-nadin-apli to the throne, who had participated in a conspiracy against Tukulti-Ninurta I which led to his murder.
Biography
According to the Nassouhi Assyrian King List,
[Nassouhi list, iii 32: m''Aš-šur-nērārī mār Aš-šur-nādin-ap'' 'li''26 MUmeš; first published by E. Nassouhi AfO 4 (1927) p. 1–11 and pl. 1f; provenance: Assur.] he was the son of Aššur-nadin-apli, his predecessor in this copy and that from Khorsabad,
[Khorsabad list, iii 23: m''Aš-šur-nērārī mār'' m˹''Aš-šur''˺''-nāṣir''2''-apli'' 6 MUmeš; first published by I. J. Gelb JNES 13 (1954) 209–230 and pl. XIVf; provenance: Khorsabad.] although the Khorsabad and SDAS
[SDAS list, iii 13: m''Aš-šur-nērārī mār''2 m''Aš-šur-nāṣir''2''-apli'' 6 MUmeš published by Gelb with the Khorsabad copy and pl. XVIf; provenance unknown.] variants both give his father as Aššur-naṣir-apli, his predecessor only on the SDAS copy. All three copies agree on his length of reign, an otherwise poorly attested 6 years, following the brief 3 or 4-year reign of his immediate predecessor, suggesting he may have been quite young when he assumed the throne and perhaps explaining the prominence of his grand vizier,
Ilī-padâ. Traces of his name also appear on a fourth, small fragment of the kinglist.
[Small fragment, first published by O. Schroeder KAV 15; provenance: Assur.] His
eponym
An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''.
Usage of the word
The term ''epon ...
year, likely to have been his first full year in office, dates a corn loan tablet
[KAJ 101 (Urad-serua #55).] from the archive of Urad-Šerūa and his family and a tablet
[TabT05A-191.] excavated in
Tell Taban
Tell Taban is an archaeological site in north-eastern Syria in the Al-Hasakah Governorate. It is the site of the ancient city of Ṭābetu.
Archaeology
The site was first excavated from 1997 until 1999 as a salvage operation in response to the ...
, Syria, and dated to the eponym year of Adad-bān-kala, may be of his reign or that of his successor.
A fragment of an
extraordinarily insulting letter[Tablet K. 3045 / ABL 924: LUGAL.MEŠ ''šá'' KUR ''aš+šur''KI.] is preserved in the
Kouyunjik
Nineveh (; akk, ; Biblical Hebrew: '; ar, نَيْنَوَىٰ '; syr, ܢܝܼܢܘܹܐ, Nīnwē) was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located in the modern-day city of Mosul in northern Iraq. It is located on the eastern ban ...
Collections in the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
and is addressed by
Adad-šuma-uṣur, king of
Babylon
''Bābili(m)''
* sux, 𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠
* arc, 𐡁𐡁𐡋 ''Bāḇel''
* syc, ܒܒܠ ''Bāḇel''
* grc-gre, Βαβυλών ''Babylṓn''
* he, בָּבֶל ''Bāvel''
* peo, 𐎲𐎠𐎲𐎡𐎽𐎢 ''Bābiru''
* elx, 𒀸𒁀𒉿𒇷 ''Babi ...
, to two rulers, Aššur-nerari III and Ilī-padâ, who are addressed as the “kings of Assyria.” The letter was copied and preserved in the Assyrian archives, possibly because of the enhanced status given to Ilī-padâ, the father of
Ninurta-apal-Ekur, king of Assyria, c. 1192–1180 BC, whose descendants reigned on at least until the 8th century, and whose genealogical claim to the throne was tenuous and otherwise only based upon descent by a collateral line from
Eriba-Adad I, c. 1393–1366 BC.
He was quite possibly violently swept aside by the ascendancy of
IIlil-kudurrī-uṣur, another son of Tukulti-Ninurta I and probably his uncle. The life and career of his grand vizier, mentor and fellow “king” of Assyria, Ilī-padâ, seems to have ended at this point or shortly afterwards. The evidence from an archive which might shed light on the events of this period remains unavailable, leading the historian
Itamar Singer to observe “regrettably, two important archives of the thirteenth century BC, each with some 400 tablets, still remain unpublished, ...(including) the Middle Assyrian texts from
Tell Sabi Abyad (found in 1997–1998).”
Inscriptions
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashur-Nirari 03
13th-century BC Assyrian kings
12th-century BC Assyrian kings