Biography
There is surprisingly little contemporary evidence for this king considering the purported length of his reign, which was the longest recorded in the Kassite dynasty. The tablet known as ''King List A''''King List A'', BM 33332, column 2, lines 8-11. shows him following Adad-šuma-iddina and his predecessor-but-one, Enlil-nadin-šumi, but in '' Chronicle P''''Chronicle P'', (ABC 22), BM 92701, column 4, lines 8 and 9. he makes his appearance in the narrative ''before'' them. Brinkman argues that this is for stylistic purposes but the ''Walker Chronicle''''Walker Chronicle'', ABC 25, BM 27796, lines 2-4. suggests a simpler explanation. Adad-šuma-uṣur was elevated to the position of king in the south of the country years before he conquered Babylon and made himself its king. The early part of his reign may well have been concurrent with that of the three kings preceding him on ''King List A'', but it is quite probable that he followed them in ascending the throne of the city of Babylon. It is a characteristic trait of this tablet that concurrent kings and dynasties are presented successively as if one followed another.Contemporary evidence
A late copy of an inscription on a bronze statue from Ur,BM 36042. begins “When Anu andUnder Tukulti-Ninurta I’s reign
Tukulti-Ninurta I, the king of Assyria, had captured Adad-šuma-uṣur's predecessor, Kaštiliašu IV, on one of his two campaigns and conquered Babylon during the second one, perhaps around 1225 BC. He had taken the Babylonian kingship and then ruled there probably through governors, for seven years. There is an economic textTablet Ni. 65, dated: ˹ITI˺.ŠE ˹U47˺.KAM, ˹MU˺.SAG.NAM.LUGAL.LA, TUKUL''-ti-''dMAŠ, “Month of Addaru, seventh day, accession year (of) Tukulti-Ninurta.” from Nippur dated to his accession year. When exactly the three native kings, Enlil-nādin-šumi, Kadašman-Ḫarbe II and Adad-šuma-iddina succeeded one another is still uncertain, but their short reigns totalled around nine years. Yamada, for example, argues that Tukulti-Ninurta only ascended the Babylonian throne ''after'' their reigns. Others place his rule before them, or propose the first two ruled in the two-year period between Tukulti-Ninurta's two campaigns. Walker suggest that after them, it seems likely that Tukulti-Ninurta's successors appointed governors over Babylon until they fled in the face of Adad-šuma-uṣur's triumph over the Assyrian king Enlil-kudurri-usur fifteen years or so after Tukulti-Ninurta died at the hand of assassins in his eponymous city. Adad-šuma-uṣur had been “put on his father’s throne” by a rebellion against Tukulti-Ninurta among the Akkadian officers. Most of the contemporary economic texts dated to his reign come from Ur, suggesting the location of his investiture. The identity of his father is never explicitly stated in the chronicle but it was assumed in antiquity to have been Kaštiliašu IV. A Luristan bronze dagger in the Foroughi Collection is inscribed with his filiation to this king, and this claim may have helped reinforce his legitimacy. It reads: ''ša'' dIŠKUR-MU-URÙ, LUGAL KIŠ, DUMU ''Kaš-til-ia-šu'', LUGAL KÁ.DINGIR.RAki, “(property) of Adad-šuma-uṣur, king of the world, son of Kaštiliašu, king of Babylon.” Tukulti-Ninurta wrote a letter to the Hittite king, thought to be Suppiluliuma II, four fragmentsLetter from Tukulti-Ninurta to Suppiluliuma II, Kbo 28.61–64. of which were discovered at the site of excavations of Ḫattuša in the 1930s. It was dated to the limmu year of Ilī-padâ, in the latter part of Tukulti-Ninurta's reign. In it, he recaps the genealogy of the recent Kassite dynasty, mentioning Kurigalzu II, Kadašman-Enlil II and Kudur-Enlil then apparently castigating Šagarakti-Šuriaš, the “non-son of Kudur-Enlil”, and his sons, one of whom, Kaštiliašu, had provoked the war by his dastardly pre-emptive strike against Assyria. In one place, the sons of Šagarakti-Šuriaš have been killed, almost certainly by none other than Tukulti-Ninurta himself. He then makes reference to a “servant of Suhi”, where Suhu is a region of northeast Syria, and Itamar Singer proposes this individual to be Adad-šuma-uṣur, the implication being he was a foreigner, not of the royal stock and consequently unqualified for office. A letter from an Elamite king,Literary letter from Elamite King to Kassite court, tablet VAT 17020. thought to be Shutruk-Nahhunte, to the Kassite elders demanding the right to the Babylonian throne through blood, describes Adad-šuma-uṣur as “son of Dunna-Sah, from the region by the bank of the Euphrates”, in his criticism of their choice of regent. Unfortunately the Tukulti-Ninurta tablet is fragmentary and the text barely readable so a variety of restorations are possible. The letter ends with a plea for military aid and a moving, “If I am alive, will send(?)a message of/about my life, but if I am dead, the message of/about my death ill be sent to you(?)��, “one hundred years, my brother Aššur-nadin-apli, but whose brief reign was succeeded in turn by his son, Aššur-nirari III. He was the recipient of an extremely offensive letter from Adad-šuma-uṣur, which he addressed to “the Assyrian kings,” putting Aššur-nirari on an equal footing with his subordinate for added insult, a fragment of which has fortuitously survived: The Ilī-ḫaddâ mentioned is Ilī-padā, the viceroy of Hanigalbat, Ashur-nirari's distant relative (sharing a common ancestor in Mitanni">Hanigalbat, Ashur-nirari's distant relative (sharing a common ancestor in Eriba-Adad I), and father of the later Assyrian king, Ninurta-apal-Ekur">Eriba-Adad I">Mitanni">Hanigalbat, Ashur-nirari's distant relative (sharing a common ancestor in Eriba-Adad I), and father of the later Assyrian king, Ninurta-apal-Ekur. He had been the eponymous official ( limmu) for the year in which Tukulti-Ninurta's letter was sent to the Hittite king. The letter was carefully copied and preserved in the library at Nineveh. Grayson speculates it was kept to “goad” the Assyrians to vengeance.Battle with Enlil-kudurri-uṣur
Ashur-nirari's rule proved to be fairly transitory and he was probably swept aside by his uncle, Enlil-kudurri-usur, another son of Tukulti-Ninurta. Adad-šuma-uṣur “muster]ed [his army] and attacked and defeated him” and then Following this famous victory, a “son of a nobody, whose name is not mentioned” exploited the chance to enthrone himself in Babylon, so a revolt was propagated and Adad-šuma-uṣur took the city and his place in the Kassite dynastic list. The events were captured for posterity in the ''Adad-šuma-uṣur Epic'',''Adad-šuma-uṣur Epic'', BM 34104+. a late Babylonian historical literary work where a rebellion of officers and nobles is caused by the neglect of Marduk and Babylon. The penitent king confesses his sins to the god and restores his temple, Esagila. The end of Enlil-kudurri-usur's reign is dated 1193 or 1183 depending on uncertainty about the duration of his successor's, Ninurta-apal-Ekur’s, rule, three or thirteen years. As a son of Ilī-padā, Ninurta-apal-Ekur had exploited Enlil-kudurri-usur’s demise to seize power in Aššur.''Synchronistic History'', ABC 21, tablet K.4401b, lines 5 to 8. He had “(come) up from Karduniaš", where he may conceivably have been the last Assyrian governor of Babylon, as his brother, Mardukīia, was governor of Katmuḫi. The length of his reign does rather crucially determine the likely date range for the beginning of Adad-šuma-uṣur's thirty-year reign, because there is no datable event that takes place at the beginning, such as the passing of a preceding monarch. The interregnum between Babylon's fall to Tukulti-Ninurta and its conquering by Adad-šuma-uṣur had been at least twenty two years and perhaps even more than thirty years. He was succeeded by his son, Meli-Šipak, who was curiously reluctant to mention his filiation to Adad-šuma-uṣur in his own inscriptions.Inscriptions
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adad-shuma-usur 13th-century BC kings of Babylon 12th-century BC kings of Babylon 12th-century BC writers Kassite kings Ancient letter writers 12th-century BC deaths