Arik-den-ili, inscribed mGÍD-DI-DINGIR, “long-lasting is the judgment of god,”[2] was King of Assyria c. 1317–1306 BC, ruling the Middle Assyrian Empire.
He succeeded Enlil-nirari, his father, and was to rule for twelve years and inaugurate the tradition of annual military campaigns against Assyria's neighbors.
He seems to have been the first of the Assyrian kings to have institutionalized the conduct of annual military campaigns,[3] some of which appear to be little more than livestock-rustling expeditions, as the chronicle mentions “a hundred head of sheep and goats and a hundred head of their cattle [...] he brought to Aššur.”[4] Arik-den-ili's first victories were against his eastern neighbours (the Pre-Iranic inhabitants of what was to become Persia), Turukku and Nigimhi, and all the chiefs of the (Zagros) mountains and highlands in the broad tracts of the Gutians to subdue the nomadic tribes on Assyria's northern and eastern frontiers.
He then turned westward into The Levant (modern Syria and Lebanon), where he subjugated the Suteans, the Aḫlamû and the Yauru, the nomadic West Semitic tribesmen who would become the Arameans, in the region of Katmuḫi in the middle Euphrates.
“In order that the harvest of my land might prosper,” he had them cleared and rebuilt the temple, laying its foundation during the eponym year of Berutu, a son of the earlier king Eriba-Adad I.