Bazaya, BāzāiaorBāzāiu, inscribed mba-za-a-a and of uncertain meaning, was the ruler of Assyria c. 1649 to 1622 BC, the 52nd listed on the Assyrian King List, succeeding Iptar-Sin, to whom he was supposedly a great-uncle. He reigned for twenty-eight years and has left no known inscriptions.[2]
The Assyrian king lists[i 1][i 2][i 3] give Bazaya's five predecessors as father-son successors, although all reigned during a fifty-two period, stretching genealogical credibility. All three extant copies give his father as Bel-bani, the second in the sequence, whose reign had ended forty-one years earlier and who had been the great-grandfather of his immediate predecessor.[3] The literal reading of the list was challenged by Landsberger who suggested that the three preceding kings, Libaya, Sharma-Adad I and Iptar-Sin may have been Bel-bani's brothers.[4]
The Synchronistic Kinglist[i 4] gives his Babylonian counterpart as Peshgaldaramesh of the Sealand Dynasty. He was succeeded by Lullaya, a usurper, whose brief reign was followed by that of Bāzāiu's own son, Shu-Ninua.[5]
^A. K. Grayson (1972). Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, Volume 1. Otto Harrassowitz. pp. 30–31.
^B. Newgrosh (1999). "The Chronology of Ancient Assyria Re-assessed". Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum. 8: 79–80.
^J. A. Brinkman (1998). "Bēl-bāni". In K. Radner (ed.). The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Volume 1, Part 2: B–G. The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. p. 288.
^K. Radner (1998). "Bāzāiu". The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Volume 1, Part 2: B–G. The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. p. 278.
