Shu-NinuaorŠÚ-orKidin-Ninua, inscribed mŠÚ-URU.ABxḪA,[i 1][i 2] the 54th king to appear on the Assyrian Kinglist, was the ruler of Assyria, c. 1615 to 1602 BC, and was the son of his predecessor-but-one, succeeding Lullaya, a “son of nobody.”[2]
The reading of the first element in his name is uncertain, as Ignace Gelb and Benno Landsberger originally proposed BAR, giving Kidin-Ninua, "[Under] the protection of Nineveh," while Arno Poebel read the name as beginning with [Š]Ú- and Weidner read it as [Š]I- on another fragmentary copy of the kinglist.[i 3] J. A. Brinkman observed that with the exception of this disputed interpretation, all transliterations gave ŠÚ, reinforced by the Synchronistic Kinglist,[i 4] ˹mŠÚ-ni˺-nu-a, which had led to the preponderance for interpreting his name as Shu-Ninua in recent years,[3] “he of Ishtar,”[4] if Nina is correctly identified as a Babylonian name for this deity, although this remains unproven. A recleaning of the fragmentary kinglist,[i 3] however, has revealed a name collated by Heeßel to be [mki-d]in-dNINUA.[5]
There are no contemporary inscriptions of his reign.[6] He is recorded as having been a contemporary of Akurduana of the Sealand Dynasty in southern Babylonia in the Synchronistic Kinglist,[i 4] rather than any supposed ruler from the Kassite dynasty. The Assyrian Kinglist records that he reigned for fourteen years before being succeeded by his sons, Sharma-Adad II and then Erishum III.
