A century of scholarship on the Assyrian Empire has leaned heavily on the Assyrian King List (AKL) as the definitive sequence of monarchs and their reigns, especially for the Neo-Assyrian period. But a new paper in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies challenges the AKL’s reputation for impartiality, arguing that the list may reflect political curation rather than straightforward chronology. In a study titled “Three New Kings of Assyria,” Alexander Johannes Edmonds and Eckart Frahm present three rulers whose reigns were excluded or obscured within the AKL framework. The implication is that early Neo-Assyrian politics were not just more complex, but also more revealing than previously assumed.
The first figure, a ruler who used the name Tiglath-pileser, appears to have ruled in parallel with an “official” king, Aššur-dān III. Edmonds and Frahm reconstruct this scenario from administrative evidence preserved on a clay tablet in the British Museum. The tablet records a royal grant and points to a reign roughly in 763–762 BCE, followed by deposition. According to the study’s interpretation, Tiglath-pileser’s challenge to Aššur-dān III escalated after a solar eclipse—an event treated as a portent with political consequences.
A second omitted king emerges from a stela discovered in 1894 at Tell ‘Abta, Iraq. The site’s artifact had long been debated because a later inscription appears to overwrite the name of the reigning monarch. Edmonds and Frahm argue that the overwritten name can be resolved by expanding the king sequence to include a Shalmaneser whose reign preceded Tiglath-pileser III’s accession in 745 BCE. This allows the monument to be read as evidence rather than a textual anomaly.
The third case centers on Aššur-uballiṭ. A cuneiform text attributes the restoration of a libation vessel to this king, but the AKL does not record an Aššur-uballiṭ between Tukultī-Ninurta I and Tukultī-Ninurta II. Edmonds and Frahm propose that a previously unrecognized reign occurred in 913–912 BCE, filling the chronological gap. They further connect this monarch to a damaged statue found at Aššur, whose head and inscriptions have deteriorated over time.
Together, these cases suggest the AKL functioned less like a neutral record and more like a legitimizing canon periodically updated to remove short-lived or rival rulers. Rather than preserving memory automatically, the list may have operated as cultural policy—deciding which kings counted as canonical. Edmonds and Frahm pose critical questions: who determined “canonicity,” how did this decision intersect with Assyrian ideas of kingship, and did the AKL have practical administrative uses or primarily ceremonial ones?
By adding three “missing” kings back into the historical map, the study reactivates the AKL as an investigative target. Instead of a static chronology, it becomes evidence of selection, conflict, and memory. The result is a renewed and more volatile picture of the early Assyrian empire—one that feels newly viral for historians and archaeologists alike because it turns an established timeline into a living political document.
Subject of Research: Assyrian King List (AKL) and Neo-Assyrian chronology; omitted kings reconstructed from archaeological/inscriptional evidence
Article Title: Three New Kings of Assyria
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Web References: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/741239
References: Edmonds & Frahm, “Three New Kings of Assyria,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies (DOI: 10.1086/741239)
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Keywords: Assyrian Empire, Neo-Assyrian, Assyrian King List, Tiglath-pileser, Aššur-dān III, Shalmaneser, Aššur-uballiṭ, cuneiform, stela, archaeology, chronology
