Ashur, he gives a brief summary of the temple's
history with details as to the length of time which elapsed between
the different periods during which it had been previously restored. The
temple was burned in Shalmaneser's time, and, when recording this fact
and the putting out of the fire, he summarizes the temple's history in a
long parenthesis, as will be seen from the following translation of the
extract: "When E-kharsag-kurkura, the temple of Ashur, my lord, which
Ushpia (variant _Aushpia_), the priest of Ashur, my forefather, had
built aforetime,--and it fell into decay and Erishu, my forefather,
the priest of Ashur, rebuilt it; 159 years passed by after the reign of
Erishu, and that temple fell into decay, and Shamshi-Adad, the priest
of Ashur, rebuilt it; (during) 580 years that temple which Shamshi-Adad,
the priest of Ashur, had built, grew hoary and old--(when) fire broke
out in the midst thereof..., at that time I drenched that temple (with
water) in (all) its circuit."

From this extract it will be seen that Shalmaneser gives us, in Ushpia
or Aushpia, the name of a very early Assyrian viceroy, who in his belief
was the founder of the great temple of the god Ashur. He also tells us
that 159 years separated Erishu from a viceroy named Shamshi-Adad, and
that 580 years separated Shamshi-Adad from his own time. When these
inscriptions were first found they were hailed with considerable
satisfaction by historians, as they gave what seemed to be valuable
information for settling the chronology of the early patesis. But
confidence in the accuracy of Shalmaneser's reckoning was somewhat
shaken a few months afterwards by the discovery of a prism of
Esarhaddon, who gave in it a history of the same temple, but ascribed
totally different figures for the periods separating the reigns
of Erishu and Shamshi-Adad, and the temple's destruction by fire.
Esarhaddon agrees with Shalmaneser in ascribing the founding of the
temple to Ushpia, but he states that only 126 years (instead of 159
years) separated Erishu (whom he spells Irishu), the son of Ilu-shumma,
from Shamshi-Adad, the son of Bel-kabi; and he adds that 434 years
(instead of 580 years) elapsed between Shamshi-Adad's restoration of the
temple and the time when it was burned down. As Shalmaneser I lived over
six hundred years earlier than Esarhaddon, he was obviously in a better
position to ascertain the periods at which the events recorded took
place, but the discrepa