Echoes of war permeat the correspondence of three western governors, Liphur-Bel of Amidi, Ašipâ and Ša-Aššur-dubbu of Tušhan. Even if Sargon's inscriptions do not mention a confrontation with Urarṭu in this area, the possibility of a large-scale conflict is described in letters 3 and 21. The former relates the state of readiness of the whole Urarṭian army, the latter tells of six Urarṭian governors assembled along the borders, while the Assyrian governor Ašipâ is keeping watch. No. 3 is interesting because it mentions the Urarṭian king Argišti, showing that the possibility of a conflict did not end with the death of Rusa I. A direct conflict is attested in no. 2, a letter of Liphur-Bel which tells of alleged Urarṭian attacks on Assyrian forts, and of the protest sent by the Assyrian governor to his Urarṭian counterpart. An Assyrian attack on a fort is described in no. 4.
The state of war also led to difficulties for the Assyrians in obtaining important materials such as timber, which was particularly abundant and valued in this area (see below): no. 3 tells of a fight to move an amount of delayed timber to Assyrian territory.
The situation in the area was complicated by the position of the independent state of Šubria, which lay north of these three provinces and south of Urarṭu. Its king, relying perhaps on the difficulty of his territory, conducted an ambiguous policy towards Assyria. Letter no. 35 shows him seizing and protecting Urarṭian deserters on their way to Assyria, while Assyrian deserters were held back and their extradition cunningly delayed with the excuse of illness.
Unfortunately, there are no means of assigning exact dates to these texts. No. 3 certainly dates from the reign of Argišti, but the accession year of this king still remains unknown. As for the others, the letters written by Ašipâ may precede those of Ša-Aššur-dubbu, since the former is known to have been active in the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III[[4]] and appears to have been followed in governorship of Tušhan by Ša-Aššur-dubbu.[[5]]
4 Cf. S. Parpola, "Assyrian Royal Inscriptions and Neo-Assyrian Letters," ARINH (1981), pp. 132 and 138.
5 Eponym (as governor of Tušhan) in 707: A. Ungnad, "Eponymen," RIA 2 (1938), p. 427. Cd 13. It should be pointed out, however, that there is no evidence (except the introductory formula that he shares with Ša-Aššur-dubbu) that Ašipâ actually ever was a governor of Tušhan. It is equally possible that his seat of office was the neighboring city of Tidu.
Giovanni B. Lanfranchi
Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, 'The Western Sector', The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces, SAA 5. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1990; online contents: SAAo/SAA05 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa05/warwithurartu/westernsector/]