Shamash-shum-ukin

Who was Shamash-shum-ukin?

Shamash-shum-ukin was the Assyrian king of Babylon from 668-648 BC. He was the second son of the Assyrian King Esarhaddon. His elder brother, crown prince Sin-iddina-apla had died in 672, and in his stead the third son Ashurbanipal was invested as crown prince and later king of Assyria, while Shamash-shum-ukin remained crown prince of Babylonia. Provincial governors and vassals had to take an oath to accept this and to help the brothers gain their respective thrones in the event of Esarhaddon's death.

When Esarhaddon unexpectedly died on a campaign against rebellious Egypt in 669, it was only the decisive action of his grandmother Naqi'a-Zakutu, widow of his grandfather Sennacherib and mother of his late father, that got Ashurbanipal on the throne, in the face of opposition by court officials and parts of the priesthood. Shamash-shum-ukin, the older brother, became viceroy of Babylonia. The arrangement was evidently intended to flatter the Babylonians by giving them once more the semblance of independence. For some time this worked well, however Shamash-shum-ukin became infused with Babylonian nationalism, and claimed that it was he rather than his younger brother that was the successor of the Mesopotamian monarchs whose empire stretched from Iran to the Mediterranean and from the Caucasus to Arabia and north Africa.