Ashur-rabi II

He was a younger son of the earlier Assyrian monarch, Aššurnaṣirpal I. He succeeded his nephew Aššur-nerari IV's brief six year rule, and if this succession was like earlier usurpations by uncles of their nephews, it would have been a violent affair. The Assyrian KinglistKhorsabad Kinglist, IM 60017 (excavation nos.: DS 828, DS 32-54), iv 9.Nassouhi Kinglist, Istanbul A. 116 (Assur 8836), iv 23.SDAS Kinglist, IM 60484, iv 9. records his accession and genealogy but provides no further information. His construction of the Bit-nathi, part of the temple of Ištar in Nineveh, was recalled in a dedicatory cone of Aššur-nāṣir-apli II (883–859 BC) commemorating his own repair work.RIMA 2 A.0.101.58:3' and copy RIMA 2 A.0.I01.65:3'.

Some Assyrian settlements on the Middle Euphrates were lost to the Arameans as they were able to cross the river and establish a network of autonomous but interrelated settlements that began to encroach on the Assyrian heartland.{{cite book |title=The Pre-Islamic Middle East |author=Martin Sicker |publisher=Praeger |year=2000 |page=48}} Šulmānu-ašarēdu III recalled the loss of Ana-Aššur-utēr-aṣbat (Pitru, possibly Tell Aushariye) and Mutkinu, two towns close to Til Barsip, which had originally been taken and colonized by Tukultī-apil-Ešarra I around a hundred years earlier; in one of his inscriptions: "At the time of Aššur-rabi (II), king of Assyria, the king of Aram (Syria) took [two cities] by force—I restored these cities. I installed the Assyrians in their midst."RIMA 3 A.0.102.2 ii 37. The king of Aram (šar₄ KUR-a-ru-mu) is unlikely to have been Hadadezer of Zobah, in southern Syria, but a northern Aram, in or near Ḫanigalbat.{{cite book |title=Ancient Damascus: A Historical Study of the Syrian City-State from Earliest Times until Its Fall to the Assyrians in 732 B.C.E. |author=Wayne T. Pitard |publisher=Eisenbrauns |year=1987 |page=91}} His authority continued to stretch as far west as the Ḫārbūr river as recorded on the cylinderRIMA 2 A.0.96.2001 clay cylinder. of Bel-ereš, a šangû or governor of Šadikanni,{{cite book |title=The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium |chapter=Assyria and Babylonia in the Tenth Century |author=Stephen W. Holloway |editor=Lowell K. Handy |publisher=Brill |year=1997 |page=2009}} somewhat contradicting the picture of Assyrian retreat and decline painted elsewhere.{{cite book |title=Dūr-Katlimmu 2008 and Beyond |chapter=Production and Consumption at Dūr-Katlimmu, A Survey of the Evidence |editor=Hartmut Kühne |publisher=Otto Harrassowitz Verlag |year=2010 |page=69}}

His era must have stretched from the reigns of his Babylonian contemporaries, Simbar-Šipak (1025–1008 BC) to Nabû-mukin-apli (978–943 BC), although there is no extant contemporary proof of contact which might help fix this chronology more precisely. The Synchronistic KinglistSynchronistic Kinglist, Ass 14616c (KAV 216), iii 7. gives his contemporary as Širikti-šuqamuna, a king of Babylonia who reigned just 3 months c. 985 BC. Severe distress and famine was recorded under Kaššu-nādin-aḫi (c. 1006–1004 BC), the midpoint in Aššur-rabi's reign, and this possibly points to the underlying cause of the Aramean migration.{{cite journal |title=Climatic Change and the Eleventh-Tenth-Century Eclipse of Assyria and Babylonia |author=J. Neumann, S. Parpola |journal=Journal of Near Eastern Studies |volume=46 |number=3 |date=Jul 1987 |page=180 |doi=10.1086/373244|s2cid=161779562 }}

He was followed on the throne by his son, the equally obscure Aššur-reši-išši II, who ruled for five years.

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• {{cite book |author=Albert Kirk Grayson |url=https://archive.org/details/assyrian-rulers-of-the-early-first-millennium-bc-i-1114-859-bc |title=Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114–859 BC) |publisher=University of Toronto Press |year=1991}}

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{{Succession box|title=King of Assyria|before=Ashur-nirari IV|after=Ashur-resh-ishi II|years=1013–972 BC}}

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{{Assyrian kings}}

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Category:11th-century BC Assyrian kings

Category:10th-century BC Assyrian kings

Category:11th-century BC births

Category:970s BC deaths

Category:Year of birth unknown

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