ABSTRACT
According to the Neo-Assyrian scribes, who composed a king list covering two millennia, the Assyrian state had tribal and nomadic origins. In this text, the first seventeen kings ‘lived in tents’ (Text 12.1). A list (in reverse order, that is from son to father) of kings who ‘were fathers/ancestors’ follows, indicating that this sequence was made in order to link Ila-kabkabi (father of the usurper Shamshi-Adad I) to the last kings ‘living in tents’, Ushpia and Apiashal. This sequence of kings reflected the cultural and political influence of the Amorites (with its genealogies of tribal chiefs) at the time, and was aimed at legitimising ShamshiAdad’s position. This aspect makes the Assyrian King List a biased and unreliable source for the origins of the Assyrian state. However, it is a much more reliable source for later kings (from Sulili to Erishum II), being based on epigraphic and archival sources. From Sulili to Ilushuma, rulers are said to be ‘kings attested in bricks (that is, brick inscriptions), but whose number of eponyms are lost’, meaning that the length of their reigns was unknown. For the period from Erishum I to Erishum II, however, the duration of the kings’ reigns is also provided, meaning that the eponyms were known.
