Ila-kabkabu
The Amorite name Ila-kabkabu appears twice in the Assyrian King List:[1]
- Ila-kabkabu is listed among the "Kings who are ancestors" (also translatable as "Kings whose fathers are known"), alongside his father, Yazkur-Ilu, and his son, Aminu.[1] This was probably around 2000 BC.
- Ila-kabkabu is also mentioned as the father of another Assyrian king, Shamshi-Adad I.[1] However, Shamshi-Adad I did not inherit the Assyrian throne from his father but was an Amorite conqueror. His father, Ila-kabkabu, was king not of Assyria, but of Terqa in Syria, and ruled in the time of Iagitlim of Mari. According to the Mari Eponyms Chronicle, Ila-kabkabu seized Shuprum in a certain year (possibly 18th century BC), and Shamshi-Adad "entered his father's house", i.e. succeeded him as king of Terqa, in the following year.[1]:163 Shamshi-Adad subsequently conquered a wide territory and became king of Assyria, where he founded a dynasty.
Arising from the two appearances of the name "Ila-kabkabu" in two different places on the list, the "Kings who are ancestors" section has often, though not universally[2] been considered a list of Shamshi-Adad's ancestors.[3] In keeping with this assumption, scholars have inferred that the original form of the Assyrian Kinglist was written, among other things, as an "attempt to justify that Shamshi-Adad was a legitimate ruler of the city-state Assur and to obscure his non-Assyrian antecedents by incorporating his ancestors into a native Assyrian genealogy".[3] According to this interpretation, both instances of the name would refer to the same man, Shamshi-Adad's father, whose line would have been interpolated into the list. However, the name might also refer to two distinct, though possibly related, individuals.
References
- ^ a b c d Glassner, Jean-Jacques (2004). Mesopotamian Chronicles. Society of Biblical
Literature. p. 137. ISBN 1589830903.
{{cite book}}: line feed character in|publisher=at position 20 (help) - ^ For example, Hildegard Levy, writing in the Cambridge Ancient History, rejected this interpretation and instead interpreted the section as the ancestors of Sulili, the kings mentioned immediately afterwards. (See Hildegard Levy, "Assyria c. 2600-1816 B.C.", Cambridge Ancient History. Volume 1, Part 2: Early History of the Middle East, 729-770, p. 745-746.)
- ^ a b Meissner, Bruno (1990). Reallexikon der Assyriologie. Vol. 6. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 101–102. ISBN 3110100517.
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