Ashur-uballit I: Assyria steps onto the wider stage

The city of Ashur on the Tigris pays tribute to Mitanni for a century and a half. Around 1363 BCE Ashur-uballit I comes to the throne; while the Hittites batter Mitanni from the west, he takes its eastern lands and for the first time calls himself "king of the land of Ashur". The Amarna archive holds two of his letters to Akhenaten: in the first he timidly sends a chariot and horses, in the second he already complains that too little gold was sent and reminds the pharaoh that he is the equal of the king of Babylon. The Babylonian king, for his part, asks the pharaoh not to receive "his subjects" the Assyrians—and does not get his way. With this reign begins the Middle Assyrian kingdom, which a century later, under Shalmaneser I and Tukulti-Ninurta I, will become the first power of Mesopotamia.