page_title: Ashurbanipal
section_title: First Elamite campaign
hierarchical_section_title: Ashurbanipal / Reign / First Elamite campaign
caption_attribution_description: Detail of this scene Detail of this reliefExhibition: I am Ashurbanipal king of the world, king of Assyria, British Museum. Tongue extraction and flaying
context_page_description: Ashurbanipal, also spelled Assurbanipal, Asshurbanipal and Asurbanipal was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Esarhaddon in 668 BC to his own death in 631 BC. The fourth king of the Sargonid dynasty, Ashurbanipal is generally remembered as the last great king of Assyria.
  At the time of Ashurbanipal's reign, the Neo-Assyrian Empire was the largest empire that the world had ever seen and its capital, Nineveh, was probably the largest city on the planet. Selected as heir by his father in 672 BC despite not being the eldest son, Ashurbanipal ascended to the throne in 669 BC jointly with his elder brother Shamash-shum-ukin, who became king of Babylon. Much of the early years of Ashurbanipal's reign was spent fighting rebellions in Egypt, which had been conquered by his father.
  The greatest campaigns of Ashurbanipal were those directed towards Elam, an ancient enemy of Assyria, and against Shamash-shum-ukin, who had expected to be an equal to Ashurbanipal and began to resent the overbearing control his younger brother held over him.
context_section_description: In 665 BC, the Elamite king Urtak launched a surprise attack against Babylonia, but was successfully driven back into Elam, dying shortly thereafter. Urtak was succeeded as Elamite king by Teumman, who was unrelated to the previous monarch and had to stabilize his rule by killing his political rivals. Three of Urtak's sons, chief rival claimants to the Elamite throne, escaped to Assyria and were harbored by Ashurbanipal, despite Teumman demanding them to be returned to Elam.
  Following his victory over the Elamites, Ashurbanipal had to deal with a series of revolts within his own borders. Bel-iqisha, chieftain of the Gambulians (an Aramean tribe) in Babylonia, rebelled after he had been implicated as supporting the Elamite invasion and had been forced to relinquish some of his authority. Little is known of this revolt, but there is a letter preserved in which Ashurbanipal orders the governor of Uruk, Nabu-ushabshi, to attack Bel-iqisha. Nabu-ushabshi apparently claimed that Bel-iqisha was solely to blame for the Elamite invasion. Bel-iqisha's revolt does not appear to have caused much damage and he was killed shortly after revolting by a boar. Shortly thereafter in 663 BC, Bel-iqisha's son Dunanu surrendered to Ashurbanipal.
  Shamash-shum-ukin appears to have tired of Ashurbanipal's rule by 653 BC; inscriptions from Babylon suggest that Ashurbanipal had been managing the affairs of Shamash-shum-ukin and had been essentially dictating his decrees. Shamash-shum-ukin sent diplomats to Teumann in Elam, hoping to use his army to destabilize Ashurbanipal's rule. Ashurbanipal appears to have been unaware of Shamash-shum-ukin's involvement, though he successfully defeated the Elamites in 653 BC and ravaged their cities and country. The final battle in this campaign, the Battle of Ulai, took place near the Elamite capital of Susa and was a decisive Assyrian victory, partly due to defections in the Elamite army. King Teumann was killed in the battle, as was one of his vassals called Shutruk-Nahhunte, the king of the city Hidalu. In the aftermath of his victory, Ashurbanipal installed two of Urtak's sons as rulers, proclaiming Ummanigash as king at Madaktu and Susa and Tammaritu I as king at Hidalu. In his inscriptions, Ashurbanipal describes his victory as follows:
  Like the onset of a terrible hurricane I overwhelmed Elam in its entirety. I cut off the head of Teumann, their king, – the haughty one, who plotted evil. Countless of his warriors I slew. Alive, with my hands, I seized his fighters. With their corpses I filled the plain about Susa as with baltu and ashagu. Their blood I let run down the Ulai; its water I dyed red like wool.
  Dunanu, who had joined the Elamites in the war, was captured alongside his family and executed and the Gambulians were attacked by Ashurbanipal's army and brutally punished, with their capital of Shapibel being flooded and many of its inhabitants slaughtered. In Dananu's stead, Ashurbanipal appointed a noble called Rimutu as the new Gambulian chieftain after he had agreed to pay a considerable sum in tribute to the Assyrian king. Ashurbanipal described his vengeance against Dananu with these words:
  On my return march I set my face against Dunanu, (king) of Gambulu, who had put his faith in Elam. Shapibel, the stronghold of Gambulu, I captured. I entered that city; its inhabitants I slaughtered like lambs. Dunanu and Sam'gunu, who had made difficult for me the exercising of sovereignty, – in shackles, fetters of iron, bonds of iron, I bound them hand and foot. The rest of the sons of Bel-iqisha, his family, the seed of his father's house, all there were, Nabû-nâ'id, Bêl-êtir, sons of Nabû-shum-êresh, the proconsul, and the bones of the father who begot them, together with Urbi and Tebê, peoples of Gambulu, cattle, sheep, asses, horses, mules, I carried off from Gambulu to Assyria. Shapibel, his stronghold, I devastated, I destroyed, I laid waste to by flooding it.
caption: Tongue removal and live flaying of Elamite chiefs after the Battle of Ulai, at the coronation of Ummanigash and his brother Tammaritu, 653 BC. British Museum.[31][32]
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