Three forgotten kings may change the accepted timeline of ancient Assyria

For more than 2,700 years, the story of Assyria’s kings has survived through fragments of clay tablets, royal inscriptions, monuments and carefully preserved lists of rulers. Together, these records have allowed historians to reconstruct the succession of one of the ancient Near East’s most powerful kingdoms. Yet ancient history is rarely as complete as surviving records make it appear. A name missing from a royal list does not necessarily mean the person never ruled, particularly when other objects and inscriptions point to a different sequence of events. Now, researchers have brought together several such clues to argue that three rulers who were largely absent from the traditional record may have briefly occupied the Assyrian throne.The study, published in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies by Alexander Johannes Edmonds and Eckart Frahm, examines evidence from ancient tablets, inscriptions and a damaged royal statue.