Aminu

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Aminu (disambiguation) .

Aminu was a king in the early days of the Assyrian Empire . His name is passed down from the Assyrian king list , which lists him as the 26th king and successor to his father Ila-kabkabū . However, whether he was the descendant of a dynasty that ruled Aššur for generations and whether Sulili, who is listed as the son of the king, was his successor is a matter of dispute in research. There is an increasing number of opposing views that he is the older brother and immediate predecessor of the conqueror Šamši-Adad I.

Aminu ends the second section of the king list, which is described with "A total of 10 kings who are ancestors" (English: ten kings who are ancestors / whose fathers are known ). In contrast to the rest of the list, the names are in reverse chronological order. The section begins with Aminu as the youngest king and ends with his ancestor Apiašal , the son of Ušpia . These last two names are a repetition of the end of the first section. As the son and successor of Aminu, Sulili stands at the beginning of the third section. Some historians therefore regard the second section as listing the ancestors of Sulili. A more precise dating is difficult. His rule probably fell into the politically chaotic phase of the decline of Sumerian high culture, towards the end of the 3rd Dynasty of Ur around 2000 BC. BC (according to medium chronology). The later Assyrian Empire is likely to have been little more than one of numerous competing city-states in the region at that time.

Deviating from this interpretation of the list of kings, it is increasingly assumed that Šamši-Adad I had his non-Assyrian ancestors added to the sequence of kings when the list of kings was first compiled, presumably to legitimize his rule over Aššur as a conqueror. An indication of this is that the fathers of Aminu and Šamši-Adad I are given by the same name and that the names of the second section do not have Akkadian, but Western Semitic origin. Accordingly, Aminu would be the older brother of Šamši-Adad I and the indication of his paternity to Sulili would be purely fictitious in order to connect the sections. The historian Glassner concluded from this that the second section actually represents the ancestral line of Aminu.

Outside the list of kings, the name Aminu is still passed down by mention in a letter from the city of Mari and by a seal that is now in the Louvre and, according to the inscription, belonged to a servant of Aminu. However, it cannot be said with certainty whether this was actually the corresponding king.

literature

• Albert Kirk Grayson , Assyrian Royal inscriptions , Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 1972. ISBN 3447013826

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Klaas R. Veenhof and Jesper Eidem, Mesopotamia: Approachments , Volume 5. Verlag Saint-Paul, 2008. ISBN 9783525534526 . P. 124
2. ↑ ^{a b} Avrāhām Malāmāṭ: King Lists of the Old Babylonian Period and Biblical Genealogies . In: I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11 (= Sources for biblical and theological study , Volume 4), edited by Richard S. Hess, David Toshio Tsumura, Eisenbrauns 1994 , ISBN 0-931464-88-9 . P. 194
3. ↑ cf. Erich Ebeling , Bruno Meissner : Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Aräologie , Volume 6, Walter de Gruyter, 1980. ISBN 978-3-11-010051-8 . P. 103 f.
   ( limited preview in Google Book search)
4. ^ Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards , The Cambridge Ancient History , Vol. 1, Part 2. Cambridge University Press, 1971. ISBN 0521077915 . P. 746
5. ↑ cf. Benno Landsberger : Assyrian King List and "Dark Ages" , in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 8/2, 1954. P. 33 ff.
6. ↑ Klaas R. Veenhof , History of the Old Orient up to the time of Alexander the Great (= The Old Testament German. Supplementary series. Outlines of the Old Testament , Vol. 11). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-51685-1 , p. 310
7. ^ Jean-Jacques Glassner: Mesopotamian Chronicles (= Writings from the Ancient World , Volume 19), Society of Biblical Literature 2004, p. 92
8. ^ Albert Kirk Grayson , Assyrian Royal inscriptions. Records of the ancient near East , Vol. 1. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 1972. ISBN 3447013826 . P. 5
   ( limited preview in Google Book search)

predecessor	Office	successor
Ila-kabkabū	Assyrian king around 21st century BC Chr.	Sulili or Šamši-Adad I.