Puzur-Ashur I

Puzur-Ashur I
Išši’ak Aššur
Reign	fl. c. 2025 BC — c. 1950 BC
Predecessor	Akiya
Successor	Shalim-ahum

Puzur-Ashur I was an Assyrian who fl. c. 2000 BC. His clearly Assyrian name (meaning, "servant of Ashur”) distinguishes him from his three immediate predecessors on the Assyrian King List, who possibly bore non-Semitic names, and from the earlier, Amorite-named, "kings who are ancestors" (also translatable as, "kings whose fathers are known"), often interpreted as a list of Shamshi-Adad I's ancestors. He is known only from his place in the Assyrian King List and from references in the inscriptions of later kings (his son and successor Shalim-ahum and the much later Ashur-rim-nisheshu and Shalmaneser III.) These later kings mentioned him among the kings who had renewed the city walls of Assur begun by Kikkia.

Puzur-Ashur I may have started a native Assyrian dynasty that endured for eight generations until Erishum II was overthrown by the Amorite Shamshi-Adad I. Hildegard Levy, writing in the Cambridge Ancient History, rejects this interpretation and sees Puzur-Aššur I as part of a longer dynasty started by one of his predecessors, Sulili. Inscriptions link Puzur-Aššur I to his immediate successors, who, according to the Assyrian King List, are related to the following kings down to Erišum II. The Assyrian King List omits Zariqum, who is known from inscriptions to have been governor (ensí) of Assur for the Third Dynasty of Ur under Amar-Sin; this Zariqum (whose name is Semitic) is sometimes placed by scholars immediately before Puzur-Ashur I, and following Akiya.

Puzur-Ashur I's successors bore the title Išši’ak Aššur, vice regent of Assur, as well as ensí.

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