Adad-nirari III

Adad-nirari III (also Adad-narari) was a King of Assyria from 811 to 783 BC.

Adad-nirari III
King of Assyria
The Tell al-Rimah Stele was discovered in 1967 and commemorates Adad-nirari III’s campaigns in the West.[1]
King of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
Reign811–783 BC
PredecessorShamshi-Adad V
SuccessorShalmaneser IV
IssueAshur-nirari V
Shalmaneser IV
Ashur-dan III
Tiglath-Pileser III?
FatherShamshi-Adad V
MotherShammuramat

Family

Adad-nirari was a son and successor of king Shamshi-Adad V, and was apparently quite young at the time of his accession, because for the first five years of his reign, his mother Shammuramat[2] was highly influential, which has given rise to the legend of Semiramis.[3]

It is widely rejected that his mother acted as regent, but she was surprisingly influential for the time period.[4]

He was the father of kings Ashur-nirari V, Shalmaneser IV, and Ashur-dan III. Tiglath-Pileser III described himself as a son of Adad-nirari in his inscriptions, but it is uncertain if this is true.

Biography
Agate beads with the name Adad-nārārī III from Khojaly: Manneans period in the National Museum of History of Azerbaijan.

Adad-nirari's youth, and the struggles his father had faced early in his reign, caused a serious weakening for the Assyrian rulership over Mesopotamia, and gave way to the ambitions of the most officers, governors, and the local rulers.

Basalt stele of the Assyrian king Adad-nirari III from Saba. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul Archeological Museums, Turkey

According to Adad-nirari's inscriptions, he led several military campaigns with the purpose of regaining the strength Assyria enjoyed in the times of his grandfather Shalmaneser III.

According to the eponym canon, he campaigned in all directions until the last of his 18 years of reign (783 BC), and he was the builder of the temple of Nabu at Nineveh. Among his actions was a siege of Damascus in the time of Ben-Hadad III in 796 BC, which led to the eclipse of the Aramaean Kingdom of Damascus and allowed the recovery of Israel under Jehoash (who paid the Assyrian king tribute at this time) and Jeroboam II.

Despite Adad-nirari's vigour, Assyria entered a several-decades-long period of weakness following his death.

gollark: I have a repeater connecting my wired network to wireless.
gollark: Try the blowtorch approach.
gollark: If your GPU temperature is above -273K then you have a cooling problem.
gollark: People of Earth! I'd like to request about ten thousand dirt. If people have spare dirt, please send it to me.
gollark: `getmetatable(foo, "__annoy_hydraz").__index(foo, 1, 2, 3)`

See also

References
  1. Tell Al Rimah Stele, IM 70543, in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad.
  2. Georges Roux: Ancient Iraq, Penguin Books, London 1992, ISBN 0-14-012523-X, page 302.
  3. Reilly, Jim (2000) "Contestants for Syrian Domination" in "Chapter 3: Assyrian & Hittite Synchronisms" The Genealogy of Ashakhet Archived 2012-03-11 at the Wayback Machine;
  4. Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture by William H. Stiebing Jr.
Preceded by
Shamshi-Adad V		 King of Assyria
811–783 BC		 Succeeded by
Shalmaneser IV
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.