Kikkia

Kikkia (sometimes given as Kikkiya), inscribed ^mKi-ik-ki-a[i 1][i 2] had been the twenty-eighth ruler of Assyria to be recorded within the Assyrian King List.[1] He was listed after Sulili and before Akiya. Kikkia's name is given as the second of a group of rulers “(named) on bricks whose eponyms are not found", suggesting that he had preceded the period in which the annually-elected limmu officials had been appointed and given their names to the years. Consequently, the length of his reign is undetermined.

Apart from his appearance in two copies of the Assyrian King List (the Khorsabad and SDAS copies, but not the Nassouhi one which is damaged at the top where he might have appeared), he is only known from two building inscriptions of his successors, moreover; the earliest of these is that of Ashur-rim-nisheshu (c. 1398 BC — c. 1391 BC), who commemorated his reconstruction of the wall of the inner-city of Assur by listing the previous restorers on a commemorative cone,[i 3] (beginning with Kikkia.) The later king, Shalmaneser II, restored this wall and gave credit to his predecessor in his inscription.[2] The erection of a defensive wall suggests that Kikkia may have won his independence from the waning influence of the Neo-Sumerian Empire. An earlier Assyrian šakkanakkum (KIŠ.NITA₂) and chief magistrate of Assur, Zariqum, who had been omitted from the extant copies of the Assyrian King Lists, had been a contemporary and vassal of Shulgi (c. 2029 BC — c. 1982 BC) and of Amar-Sin of Ur (c. 1981 BC — c. 1973 BC),[3] so one would suppose that Kikkia must have reigned after this time. Arthur Ungnad interpreted Kikkia's name, and that of Ushpia, as being that of the Hurrian language (BA VI, 5, S. 13), but more recent research no longer holds this thesis as tenable, and Arno Poebel was not convinced by the interpretation.[4]