Ushpia () was according to the ''
Assyrian King List
The king of Assyria (Akkadian language, Akkadian: , later ) was the ruler of the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria, which was founded in the late 21st century BC and fell in the late 7th century BC. For much of its early history, Assyria was ...
'' (AKL) the 16th Assyrian monarch, ruling in Assyria's
early period, though he is not attested in any known contemporary artefacts. The list places him as the second last within the section "kings who lived in tents”. According to the ''
Cambridge Ancient History'', the conclusion of this section, "marked the end of the nomadic period of the
Assyrian people
Assyrians (, ) are an ethnic group Indigenous peoples, indigenous to Mesopotamia, a geographical region in West Asia. Modern Assyrians Assyrian continuity, share descent directly from the ancient Assyrians, one of the key civilizations of Mesop ...
."
[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.)] Ushpia is alleged to have founded the temple for the god
Aššur within the city-state of
Aššur,
according to the much later inscriptions of both of these Assyrian kings:
Shulmanu-asharedu I (''
fl.
''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...
'' ''c.'' 1273 BC) and
Aššur-ahu-iddin (''
fl.
''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...
'' 681 BC). Ushpia is succeeded on the AKL by
Apiashal.
Arthur Ungnad interpreted both Ushpia's and
Kikkia's names as being that of the
Hurrian language
Hurrian is an extinct Hurro-Urartian language spoken by the Hurrians (Khurrites), a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotami ...
(as opposed to the Assyrian dialect of the Semitic
Akkadian language
Akkadian ( ; )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218–280 was an East Semitic language that is attested ...
), but;
Arno Poebel was not convinced by this interpretation
and more recent research no longer holds Ungnad's thesis as tenable.
See also
*
Timeline of the Assyrian Empire
*
Early Period of Assyria
*
List of Assyrian kings
The king of Assyria (Akkadian language, Akkadian: , later ) was the ruler of the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria, which was founded in the late 21st century BC and fell in the late 7th century BC. For much of its early history, Assyria was ...
*
Assyrian continuity
*
Assyrian people
Assyrians (, ) are an ethnic group Indigenous peoples, indigenous to Mesopotamia, a geographical region in West Asia. Modern Assyrians Assyrian continuity, share descent directly from the ancient Assyrians, one of the key civilizations of Mesop ...
*
Assyria
Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...
References
21st-century BC Assyrian kings
{{ANE-bio-stub