Idrimi

Idrimi (meaning "It is my help") was the king of Alalakh c. 1490–1465 BC, or around 1450 BC. He is known mainly from an inscription on his statue found at Alalakh by Leonard Woolley in 1939. According to that inscription, he was a son of Ilim-Ilimma I, King of Halab (now Aleppo), who would have been deposed by the new regional master Barattarna, King of Mitanni. Idrimi probably succeeded in gaining the throne of Alalakh with the assistance of a group known as the Habiru, founding the Kingdom of Mukish as a vassal state to the Kingdom of Mitanni. He also invaded the Hittite territories to the north, resulting in a treaty with the country Kizzuwatna.

Jacob Lauinger considers Idrimi a historical character, King of Alalakh around 1450 BC, during the Late Bronze Age, but suggests his statue and inscriptions can be dated from c. 1400 to 1350 BC and can be related to a Mesopotamian pseudo-autobiography (called narû-literature), in which kings apparently leave records of their misadventures as a lesson for future generations. Lauinger also comments that the inscriptions try to legitimize the rule of Alalakh only by acknowledging the supremacy of Mitanni, and the text(s) may have had an audience coeval to politics of that time.

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