Acta Ant. Hung.

46, 2006, 3338

DOI: 10.1556/AAnt.46.2006.12.5
TAMS DEZS

UBRIA AND THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE

Summary:

Key words:

ubria was a buffer state in a sensitive and probably defenceless position between the Assyrian Empire and Urartu. In spite of the fact that the kings of ubria
had been defying the commands of the Urartian kings, and braving the anger of the
Assyrian kings for a long time,1 none of the superpowers attacked the country until
673 BC, when Esarhaddon (680669 BC), king of Assyria invaded ubria and destroyed its cities. The present paper tries to find answers to what the power behind
this brave defiance might have been.
It is known from an Assyrian letter written to Sargon II (721705 BC) by aAur-dubbu, governor of the neighbouring Assyrian province, Tuhan, that Argiti
II, king of Urartu, for example put pressure on Hu-Teub, king of ubria and threatened him with taking back the jewelry that he and his father had previously given to
the ubrian king.2 The Urartian king gave a command to his messenger: Do not
greet Hu-Teub, and do not accept an agreement (from him), (or) I shall punish you!
Hu-Teub sent a messenger to the Urartian together with his messenger; he went,
(but) in the middle of the journey he arrested him, saying: (You will be held) until I

At least from the reign of Sargon II (721705 B.C.). See later.

LANFRANCHI, G. B.PARPOLA, S. (eds.): The Correspondence of Sargon II. Part II: Letters from
the Northern and Northeastern Provinces [State Archives of Assyria V]. Helsinki 1990, no. 31, 1317.
2

0044-5975 / $ 20.00 2006 Akadmiai Kiad, Budapest

34

TAMS DEZS

go and speak to [your] government; should they release you, you will go, and never
return.3
Another letter of a-Aur-dubbu tells us that Assyrian deserters fled to ubria.4
The governor sent Assyrian soldiers to bring the deserters back to Assyria: I sent
two eunuchs of mine with six soldiers and a seal(ed order) for the deserters in Penz;
they went off with two cohort commanders and had the men brought down. They had
dinner there; the brother of the ubrian (king) too dined with them there. They set
out together and were on their way home, when the ubrians attacked them from an
ambush and captured my two eunuchs and the six soldiers. Both of my cohort
commanders escaped. I wrote him: Release the soldiers! but he said: I will inquire
(into the matter); if they are in my country, I shall give them back. I set out on their
trail personally, but they had (already) taken the soldiers up to his fort.5 It is known
from a further fragmentary letter of the same governor that Sargon II answered as
follows: Capture his men in equal number to your men, until he releases them.6
It is known from the letters of Aur-dr-pnya, governor of another
neighbouring Assyrian province, abireu that ubria was a refuge for the Assyrian
deserters,7 and that the ubrians attacked even those Assyrian soldiers, who went
after the deserters.8
Hu-Teub was otherwise a good Assyrian vassal, and wrote a series of intelligence reports concerning the home affairs of the Urartians, enemies of Assyria.9 It is
known from the letter of Aur-dr-pnya, however, that when Hu-Teub would
have had to come to Assyria, to an audience in the royal court, he sent an excuse
instead, claiming that he had unexpectedly fallen ill, and instead of himself dispatched a delegation to Assyria, which had to give an detailed account of those Assyrians who in the last three years had fled from the military service and labour du-

LANFRANCHIPARPOLA (n. 2) no. 31, 1829.

LANFRANCHIPARPOLA (n. 2) no. 32.
5
LANFRANCHIPARPOLA (n. 2) no. 32, 7 rev. 10.
6
LANFRANCHIPARPOLA (n. 2) no. 33, 910.
7
LANFRANCHIPARPOLA (n. 2) no. 54.
8
LANFRANCHIPARPOLA (n. 2) no. 53: A commander-of-fifty of mine, of the Gurrean (troops)
from Meturna, killed the mayor of Meturna. From the moment the expedition came, he did not show up
to do work with his fellows but, afraid of his deed, took with him 15 Gurreans and went away to Urartu.
(When) they came and reported it to me, I sent Il-dal to ubria, saying: Go and bring down your
servants. He went, but did he bring down his servants? I sent my messenger back to Il-dal, telling him:
This commander-of-fifty and his men! I have hurt the whole mountain (area) and all the passes because
of him! Go and pursuit after him! Pursuing him he went to ubria. The commander-of-fifty and his
soldiers entered Marhuha, a fort of the ubrian (king). Il-dal saw him and ma[de a sw]orn agreement
with him: Come and bring me the seal of the go[vernor] and [you] shall be fr[ee]. My commander-offifty and 100 Marhuhean hoplites went after Il-dal and attacked him on the road. The servants of the
king, my lord, were on their guard; none of them got killed, and they wounded the commander-of-fifty.
They turned back and entered Marhuha. We, who organized the present pursuit of the commander-offifty they did not arrest him and hand him over but took the man away! Once again, they are (only)
bringing forth and handing over old subjects of the king, my lord, who have been living there.
9
LanfranchiParpola (n. 2) nos. 4445.
4

Acta Ant. Hung. 46, 2006

UBRIA AND THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE

35

ties to ubria.10 The Assyrian governor accused Hu-Teub that he gave not only
asylum to the runaway Assyrians, but fields, gardens and houses as well, and settled
them in his country.
ubria (ubr) is known from the Assyrian sources as early as the reign of
Adad-nirari II (911891 BC), (who recaptured) the cities Arinu, Turhu, (and) Zaduru, conquered regions which the land ubr had torn away from Assyria.11 ubria
had a long tradition of granting asylum to Assyrian refugees. It is known from the
royal inscriptions of Ashurnasirpal II (883859 BC) that he brought back enfeebled
Assyrians who, because of hunger (and) famine, had gone up to other lands to the
land ubru. I settled them in the city Tuha.12 Tuha as known from the letters
written by a-Aur-dubbu to Sargon II was the capital of an Assyrian province
neighbouring ubria. It became an Assyrian provincial capital as early as the reign of
Ashurnasirpal II, who rebuilt the city.13 It was in Tuha that Ashurnasirpal II received the tribute of Ili-hite14 (or Anhitti), the king of ubria, who was a vassal of
Shalmaneser III (858824 BC), the son of Ashurnasirpal II, as well.15
The mountain region of ubria defied Assyria and Urartu for a long time after
the reign of Sargon II as well. However, the Assyrians (and probably the Urartians as
well) never attacked the country. The Assyrian attitude changed only after the murder of Sennacherib in 681 BC, when the two treacherous brothers, two sons of Sennacherib, Adrammelech (Arda-mulissi) and Sarecer16 probably fled to ubria with
their followers, and later to Urartu. Their younger brother Esarhaddon (680669 BC),
who defeated them in a short civil war (681 BC) attacked ubria in 673 BC but he
did not succeed in capturing his brothers. The timing of this campaign was very im10
LANFRANCHIPARPOLA (n. 2) no. 52, 412. The ubrian emissaries came to abireu on the
23th of Adar (XII). Perhaps the king, my lord, will say: Who are they? (They are) Yata, his man in
charge of the towns near the Urartian border, and with him Abi-yaq, a local inhabitant. Perhaps the king,
my lord, will say: Why did his brother and his deputy, who at the review said they would come, not
come? They say: Hu-Teub is ill; these (people) have come to bargain. They have written down on
clay tablets the kings men and the people of the country who last year, the year before and three years
ago ran away from labour duty and military service, ending up there, and have set them as their bargain;
they are going to bring (the tablets) and read them to the king, my lord. Yet the prime men who now
escape the kings work and go there he gives them fields, gardens and houses, settles them in his
country, and there they stay. These emissaries who came to bargain, Hu-Teub being ill, said: We will
go and see; they are now coming , but (when) they read the said tablet to the king, my lord, it is not the
whole truth. Eight men, one mule and three donkeys have come with the emissaries. The king, my lord,
told me: When the emissaries come, Aur-bessunu should come with them if the king, my lord, so
orders, he may go and speak with them. Let the king, my lord, write me what his orders are.
11
GRAYSON, A. K.: Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium B.C. I (1114859 BC) [The
Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. Assyrian Periods 2]. Toronto 1991, A.0.99.2, 3435.
12
GRAYSON (n. 11) A.0.101.1, II 78.
13
GRAYSON (n. 11) A.0.101.1, II 36: I took Tuha in hand for renovation. I cleared away its old
wall, delineated ist area, reached its foundation pit, (and) built (and) completed in a splendid fashion a
new wall from top to bottom. A palace for my royal residence I founded inside.
14
GRAYSON (n. 11) A.0.101.1, II 12. Later he received in Tuha the tribute of the land Nirdun (II
100101) and reaped the harvest of their land (Nairi) and stored the barley and straw in the city of Tuha
(II 117).
15
GRAYSON, A. K.: Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC. II (858745 B.C.) [The
Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. Assyrian Periods 3]. Toronto 1996. A.0.102.14, 53.
16
2Kings 19. 37.

Acta Ant. Hung. 46, 2006

36

TAMS DEZS

portant, since in these years Esarhaddon entered into a treaty with his vassals and
officials, in which he secured the order of succession: Assurbanipal became the
crown prince of Assyria, and Shamash-shum-ukin became the crown prince of
Babylon.17 Esarhaddon, however, knew that the most important threat for the succession of his sons was that his murderous brothers hiding probably somewhere in
ubria or Urartu were still alive. The prime reason for the ubrian campaign probably was that Esarhaddon wanted to arrest his brothers, or at least their followers.
In one of the fragments of his Letter to god18 Esarhaddon blamed Ik-Teup,
the king of ubria, for he gave shelter and granted political asylum to those Assyrian
governors (L.phtu), and other officials (akli, piri and red) who fled to ubria
probably after the murder of Sennacherib in 681 BC. This letter, however, does not
mention his two brothers, Adrammelech (Arda-mulissi) and Sarecer, who murdered
their father. Esarhaddon sent a message to the ubrian king, and commanded him to
gather all the Assyrian fugitives and send them to Assyria with the help of a herald
(L.ngiru). Ik-Teup, however, refused to obey. From the other letter fragment19
we can learn that the ubrian king had already repented his sins, wrapped his body in
a sack like a slave, and bowed low upon the walls of his city. After praising the Assyrian king Ik-Teup asked him to place a eunuch over ubria, and convert it into an
Assyrian vassal state (let him draw the yoke of Assyria) and promised that he will
pay back fifty times everything that was carried off, and for every fugitive Assyrian
he will make a hundredfold return.20 Esarhaddon however refused his requests, saying, Ik-Teup had already neglected his commands concerning the return of Assyrian
refugees from ubria three times. The Assyrian king layed siege on the royal city of
Ik-Teup, Uppume, which was situated on top of a mighty mountain like a cloud.
The ubrians set fire to the Assyrian siege-ramp, but a sudden wind turned the fire
toward the city wall, which caught fire and burned down.21 The Assyrians conquered
Uppume. Ik-Teup had made an image of himself, clothed it in sack, put upon it iron
fetters and had it sent to the Assyrian king with his two sons, er-[] and []-giTeup. The Assyrians cut off the hands, noses and ears of the captured Assyrian fugitives, who were not only those Assyrian subjects, who had fled to ubria to evade
the military service and labour duties, but were mainly those Assyrians, who were
granted asylum in ubria after the civil war broke out following the murder of Sennacherib. They might well have mainly been the followers of the two Assyrian
princes, Arda-mulissi and Sarecer, who, fearing the vengeance of the new Assyrian
king Esarhaddon, sought refuge abroad. After thoroughly examining them, the Assyrian king sent home those Urartian refugees, about whom Rusa, king of Urartu had
written to ubria, but the ubrian king refused to expell them from his country.

17
PARPOLA, S.WATANABE, K.: Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths [State Archives of
Assyria II]. Helsinki 1988, nos. 68.
18
BORGER, R.: Die Inschriften Asarhaddons, Knigs von Assyrien [Archiv fr Orientforschung,
Beiheft 9]. Graz 1956, 102.
19
BORGER (n. 18) 102107.
20
BORGER (n. 18) 102103, col. I 116.
21
BORGER (n. 18) 104, col. II 17.

Acta Ant. Hung. 46, 2006

UBRIA AND THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE

37

It seems obvious that in 673 BC Esarhaddon attacked and captured ubria, and
destroyed its cities only in search of those runaway Assyrians who had fled from the
Empire in 681 BC and were probably involved in the plot which resulted in the murder of Sennacherib, king of Assyria. The murder of Sennacherib and the hiding of the
killers was probably such an unfriendly and sacrilegeous act, by which the ubrian
king exceeded the limit of the Assyrian tolerance. A similar threshold might have
been the abduction of the Assyrian crown prince Aur-ndin-umi from Babylon by
the Elamites in 694 BC, which resulted in the destruction of another holy city,
Babylon in 689 BC.
There is an obvious question which has to be answered: what was the reason
for this special treatment of the small hillcountry, ubria by the two superpowers,
Assyria and Urartu? Why did they not conquer or destroy this kingdom earlier? The
following letter of a-Aur-dubbu, the Assyrian governor of the neighbouring Assyrian province, Tuhan probably explains the connection between the ubrian king
and the refugees entering his country, and highlights the ubrian attitude. It is known
from this letter22 that the king of ubria, Hu-Teub did not return to the Urartian king
those deserters who had fled from Urartu to ubria, and did not extradite them even
to the Assyrian ruler, however he asked him to hand over the Urartian refugees to the
Assyrian authorities: I asked the ubrian: Why do you seize deserters from the Urartian (king) fleeing to Assyria, and [settle them in] the city? Why do you [protect
dese]rters and not give them to us? His reply: I fear the gods. A scout commander
of the Urartian entered the town with 50 mules. They took the mules from him, put
iron shackles to his arms and feet and returned him to the Urartian. I wrote him:
Why are you not afraid of the gods, (you) abati, calf of the Urartian! Emissaries of
the Urartian keep coming and going to him. As the answer of the ubrian king I
fear the gods shows, ubria was a country of refuge, which probably drew this
tradition from its religion, and most probably from the existence of a refuge sanctuary. This sanctuary may have been a temple of Teub (in Uppume, the royal city of
ubria?), who judging from the ubrian royal names was probably the chief god
of the ubrian pantheon. It is possible that the jewelry mentioned above, which Argiti II and his predecessor(s) had given to the ubrian kings was indeed an offer to
the sanctuary.
There are several holy cities known from the region. Shalmaneser I (1273
1244 BC) for example destroyed the holy city of Arinu: The city Arinu, the holy
city founded in bedrock,23 which had previously rebelled (and) disregarded Assur:
with the support of Assur and the great gods, my lords, I captured (and) destroyed
that city and sowed salty plants over it.24 Tukulti-Ninurta I (12431207 BC) conquered another holy city:25 (As) with a bridle I controlled the land of the ubaru, the
22

LANFRANCHIPARPOLA (n. 2) no. 35, obv. 17 rev. 6.

URU.a-ri-na ki-a ur-u-da ki-ir hur--ni.
GRAYSON, A. K.: Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millennia BC (to 1115 BC) [The
Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. Assyrian Periods 1]. Toronto 1987, A.0.77.1, 4753.
25
GRAYSON (n. 24) A.0.78.1, 4043.
23

24

Acta Ant. Hung. 46, 2006

38

TAMS DEZS

land Alzu, and their allied kings. I conquered the great cult centre of the land, Purulimzu.26 There were further famous cult centres in the region: Adad-nirari II (911
891 BC) for example marched to the assistance of the city Kummu, and made
sacrifices before the god Adad of the city of Kummu, his lord.27 As known from the
correspondence of Sargon II, Kummu remained one of the most important vassal
kingdoms of Assyria on the border of Urartu. These cities of the border region of the
1st millennium BC empires of Assyria and Urartu probably had a long cultic
tradition dating back to the Mitannian Empire of the 16th14th centuries BC. This
was the region where the Hurrian culture survived in the 1st millennium BC. If we
add, moreover, that one of the most famous religious centres, Musasir probably had a
similarly long tradition which can be traced back to the Hurrian culture of the 2nd
millennium BC, this region of cultic centres can confidently be outlined: Musasir
(temple of the Urartian chief god, Haldi) in the East, Kummu (Adad sanctuary),
ubria (Teub sanctuary?) and Purulimzu (land Alzu) in the middle and Arinu28 (land
Muri) in the west in Southeast-Anatolia. The centre of this region was the land of
Nairi.
It is interesting furthermore that Ik-Teub, wrapped in a sack like a slave and
bowing low upon the walls of his city, promised that he would pay back fifty times
everything that was carried off and for every fugitive Assyrian he would make a
hundredfold return.29 Actually, it seems that he did not promise to return the fugitives
themselves. Is it possible that Ik-Teub feared his gods much more than he feared the
besieging Assyrian army?
Tams Dezs
Department of Assyriology and Hebraic Studies
Etvs Lornd University (ELTE)
H-1053 Budapest
Kecskemti u. 1012.

26

ma-ha-za GAL-a(rab) KUR.pu-ru-lim-zi.

GRAYSON (n. 11) A.0.99.2, 9193.
28
Arinu is known from the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I (11141076 B.C.): I confined them to one
city, the city Arinu which is at the foot of Mount Aisa (GRAYSON (n. 11) A.0.87.1, V 77) and also from
the royal inscriptions of Adad-nirari II (911891 B.C.), which mentions Arinu as a land, which ubr had
torn away from Assyria, but the Assyrian king recaptured it (GRAYSON (n. 11) A.0.99.2, 3435). It has to
be mentioned that the holy city of Arinu might well have been the city of the Hittite sun god Arinna, the
city which (Arinna) is traditionally located to the southwest of Hatti.
29
BORGER (n. 18) 102103, col. I 116.
27

Acta Ant. Hung. 46, 2006