For about a century, scholars studying the Assyrian Empire have treated the Assyrian King List (AKL) as the standard record of the kingdom’s rulers and the order in which they reigned, particularly during the later phases of Assyrian history.
A recent study in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies, titled “Three New Kings of Assyria,” argues that the AKL may not be as complete or politically neutral as researchers once assumed. Alexander Johannes Edmonds and Eckart Frahm identify three rulers who do not appear on the list but whose reigns can be reconstructed from other surviving evidence.
Their findings suggest that “early Neo-Assyrian political history was much messier, but also more interesting, than has so far been recognized.”
A Rival King After a Solar Eclipse
The first overlooked ruler identified by Edmonds and Frahm used the name Tiglath-pileser, apparently adopting the name of an earlier Assyrian king.
This Tiglath-pileser appears to have ruled at the same time as the officially recognized king Aššur-dān III, who was also his nephew. He tried to remove Aššur-dān III from power following a solar eclipse that would have carried major political and religious significance in the ancient world.
Evidence for his administration survives on a clay tablet now held by the British Museum. The tablet records a royal grant and indicates that Tiglath-pileser probably ruled from roughly 763-762 BCE before eventually being deposed.
A Second Missing King
The evidence for another forgotten ruler comes from a stela discovered in 1894 at Tell ‘Abta, Iraq.
For years, researchers have debated why the name of the Assyrian king originally associated with the monument was overwritten with the name of another “Tiglath-pileser.” Edmonds and Frahm argue that this long-standing puzzle can be explained by adding another ruler to the royal sequence.
They propose that a king named Shalmaneser ruled immediately before Tiglath-pileser III came to power in 745 BCE.
A Forgotten Aššur-uballiṭ
The third case centers on a ruler named Aššur-uballiṭ.
A cuneiform text attributed to King Tukultī-Ninurta II refers to a libation vessel that had originally been created by Tukultī-Ninurta I and was later restored by Aššur-uballit. The problem is that the AKL lists no king by that name between the reigns of Tukultī-Ninurta I and Tukultī-Ninurta II.
Edmonds and Frahm suggest that a previously unrecognized Aššur-uballit ruled from 913-912 BCE. His existence would account for the reference on the tablet and could also explain the identity of a royal figure shown in a statue discovered at Aššur. The statue is heavily damaged, with its head removed and its arms and royal insignia worn away.
Rethinking the Assyrian King List
The possible existence of these three rulers raises broader questions about what the Assyrian King List was actually designed to do.
Rather than serving as “an impartial chronographic work,” the researchers suggest it may instead have functioned as “a legitimizing canon of kings, which was periodically updated to remove short-lived or parallel Neo-Assyrian rulers.”
That possibility gives historians a new way to interpret the AKL and the political motives behind it. Edmonds and Frahm ask: “What and who determined a king’s ‘canonicity’? How did this intersect with Assyrian cultural memory or notions of kingship? Was the AKL’s function at all practical, or solely ceremonial?”
With three previously hidden royal histories now coming into view, the Assyrian King List itself has become a fresh subject of investigation. The findings make the early political history of the Assyrian Empire more complicated than scholars once believed, but also far more revealing.
By exposing possible gaps in Assyria’s official record of kings, Edmonds and Frahm offer a new perspective on how political legitimacy and historical memory may have shaped the story of the world’s first empire.
