Ishme-Dagan I

Who is Ishme-Dagan I?

Ishme-Dagan I was the son of the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad I, put on the throne of Ekallatum by his father after a successful military attack. He ruled the area of the upper Tigris, including the city-state of Assur. Following Shamshi-Adad's death, Ishme-Dagan I managed to rule Assyria until himself being ousted by Hammurabi. The much later Assyrian kinglist credited Ishme-Dagan with 40 years, but it is now known, from a recently discovered limmu-list of eponyms unearthed at Kanesh, that his reign in Assur lasted 11 years. His brother, Yasmah-Adad, ruled around the same time in the city of Mari, where the correspondence between the father and two sons was found by archaeologists.