Aššur-etil-ilāni, also spelled Ashur-etel-ilani and Ashuretillilani (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning "Ashur is the lord of the Tree"), was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Ashurbanipal in 631 BC to his own death in 627 BC. Aššur-etil-ilāni is an obscure figure with a brief reign from which few inscriptions survive. Because of this lack of sources, very little concrete information about the king and his reign can be deduced. It is possible that Aššur-etil-ilāni was a weak ruler as there are no records of the king ever undertaking a military campaign or going on a hunt, activities previous Assyrian kings would famously do very often; this, in turn, may have helped to entice some of Assyria's vassals, such as the Kingdom of Judah, to break free from Assyrian control and begin to act independently. Aššur-etil-ilāni was succeeded by his brother Sîn-šar-iškun under uncertain, though not necessarily violent, circumstances. Background and chronology There is a distinct lack of available sources in regards to the last few years of Ashurbanipal's reign and the reign of Aššur-etil-ilāni. The annals of Ashurbanipal, the primary sources for his reign, go no further than 636 BC. Although Ashurbanipal's final year is often repeated as 627 BC, this follows an inscription at Harran made by the mother of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus nearly a century later. The final contemporary evidence for Ashurbanipal being alive and reigning as king is a contract from the city of Nippur made in 631 BC. To get the attested lengths of the reigns of his successors to match, most scholars agree that Ashurbanipal either died, abdicated or was deposed in 631 BC. Of the three options, a death in 631 BC is the most accepted. If Ashurbanipal's reign would have ended in 627 BC, the inscriptions of his successors Aššur-etil-ilāni and Sîn-šar-iškun in Babylon, covering several years, would have been impossible since the city was seized by the Neo-Babylonian king Nabopolassar in 626 BC to never again fall into Assyrian hands. Ashurbanipal had named his successor as early as 660 BC, when documents referencing a crown prince were written. He had been the father of at least one son, and probably two, early on in his reign. These early sons were likely Aššur-etil-ilāni and Sîn-šar-iškun. The common assumption that Aššur-etil-ilāni came to the throne at a young age is based on the phrase "my father did not