Kikkia (sometimes given as Kikkiya), inscribed
m''Ki-ik-ki-a''
[''Khorsabad Kinglist'', i 23.][''SDAS Kinglist'', i 22.] 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 28th Assyrian monarch, ruling in Assyria's
early period. He is listed within a section of the AKL as the second out of the six, "kings whose eponyms are not known."
As all the other early rulers listed in the king list and unattested elsewhere, there is dispute among scholars as to whether Kikkia was a real historical figure.
Apart from his appearance in two copies of the Assyrian King List (the Khorsabad and SDAS copies, but not the Nassouhi one which is damaged at the top where he might have appeared), he is only known from two building inscriptions of his successors, moreover; the earliest of these is that of
Ashur-rim-nisheshu (c. 1398 BC — c. 1391 BC), who commemorated his reconstruction of the wall of the inner-city of Assur by listing the previous restorers on a
commemorative cone,
[Cone VAT? 2764.] (beginning with Kikkia.) The later king,
Shalmaneser II, restored this wall and gave credit to his predecessor in his inscription. The erection of a defensive wall suggests that Kikkia may have won his independence from the waning influence of the
Neo-Sumerian Empire. An earlier Assyrian ''šakkanakkum'' (
KIŠ.NITA2) and chief magistrate of Assur,
Zariqum, who had been omitted from the extant copies of the Assyrian King Lists, had been a contemporary and vassal of
Shulgi
Shulgi ( dšul-gi,(died c. 2046 BC) formerly read as Dungi) of Ur was the second king of the Third Dynasty of Ur. He reigned for 48 years, from (Middle Chronology). His accomplishments include the completion of construction of the Great ...
(c. 2029 BC — c. 1982 BC) and of
Amar-Sin of
Ur (c. 1981 BC — c. 1973 BC), so one would suppose that Kikkia must have reigned after this time. Arthur Ungnad interpreted Kikkia's name, and that of
Ushpia, 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 ...
(BA VI, 5, S. 13), but more recent research no longer holds this thesis as tenable, and Arno Poebel was not convinced by the interpretation.
[Arno Poebel, The Assyrian King List from Khorsabad, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 1/3, 1942, 253]
See also
*
Timeline of the Assyrian Empire
The timeline of ancient Assyria can be broken down into three main eras: the Old Assyrian period, Middle Assyrian Empire, and Neo-Assyrian Empire. Modern scholars typically also recognize an Early Assyrian period, Early period preceding the Old ...
*
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 ...
Inscriptions
References
20th-century BC Assyrian kings
{{ANE-bio-stub