Ninurta-apal-Ekur

Ninurta-apal-Ekur, inscribed ^mdMAŠ-A-é-kur, meaning “Ninurta is the heir of the Ekur,” was a king of Assyria in the early 12th century BC who usurped the throne and styled himself king of the universe and priest of the gods Enlil and Ninurta. His reign is immensely significant to the Chronology of the ancient Near East as it overlaps the reigns of his Babylonian contemporaries Adad-šuma-uṣur and Meli-Šipak.

There is some dispute as to how long he reigned, based on discrepancies among various copies of the Assyrian King List. The Nassouhi King List, sometimes considered to be older than the other versions of the King List we have, gives him 13 years of reign, but the other king lists give him only three. More recent scholarship has tended to support the shorter reign, in which case he reigned from 1182 to 1180 BC (alternately, he reigned from 1192 to 1180 BC).

There are up to eleven possible limmu officials named for his regnal years and a recent publication proposes the following sequence:

As the seventh in the sequence is Ninurta-apal-Ekur’s son and successor, Aššur-dan I, and the king was thought to occupy the limmu position in the first year of his ascendancy, it is suggested that the succession took place here.

His father was Ilī-padâ, who had followed his father, Aššur-iddin, and grandfather, Qibi-Aššur, as grand vizier, or sukkallu rabi’u, of Assyria and king of the dependant state of Ḫanigalbat. Qibi-Aššur may be one of three officials who are attested as limmu’s, the sons of Šamaš-aḫa-iddina, Ṣilli-Marduk, Ibašši-ili, respectively and it is this latter one, whose limmu year directly follows that of Tukulti-Ninurta I, that has led some to speculate that Ninurta-apal-Ekur was a descendant of Adad-nirari I, a genealogy that is unlikely as he claims descent only from Eriba-Adad I in his inscriptions. The earlier two have their limmu years during the reign of Shalmaneser I which better fits the chronology.

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