Analysis

Note that the three basic titles are repeated and further elaborated in the three sections of the text: (1) ‘king of the universe’ through an account of the vast expeditions of the king (with a strong emphasis on rebels, totality,

Borders, conquest, lack of rivals); (2) ‘strong king’ through an account of the personal valiantness of the king (‘at his feet’ — ‘with his hands’); (3) ‘king of Assyria’ through an emphasis on dynastic continuity and the restoration of the capital’s building. Among other aspects: the ‘four quarters’ re-iterate a quadripartite structure; ‘above and below’, the phrase concluding the first section, is specified in the second section (Nairi is in the north and Babylonia is in the south with respects to Assyria, following the course of the Tigris). Regarding the relationship with the god Ashur: the relationship is passive in the first section (the king wins through divine support), absent in the second section (‘strong’ is a secular and autonomous title), active in the third section (the king takes care of the buildings in the god’s city).

The Euphrates front was by nature quite fixed. Once problems along the border were solved (such as in the cases of Nurira and Nihriya), the great river continued to remain difficult to cross for both empires’ armies. The latter could have tried to cross further north, but the area was as difficult to access as it was politically problematic. When Tukulti-Ninurta came to the throne, he received a letter from Tudhaliya IV. In an attempt to provide sound advice to the young king, the Hittite king wrote to discourage him from sending a military expedition against Paphi, a piece of advice that the Assyrian king promptly dismissed. This was a rather small episode, yet very significant. Both kings were unable to fully control the area between the Upper Euphrates and Upper Tigris, but both feared that the opponent would eventually succeed, or become too influential in the area.

Later on, Tukulti-Ninurta and Tudhaliya would become fully-fledged enemies. This forced the Hittite king to mobilise his Syrian vassals economically (through the military exemption of Ugarit in exchange of an expensive payment), commercially (through the treaty with Shaushgamuwa, which prevented him from sending and allowing merchants to and from Assyria), and militarily. Despite the tension, there were no direct wars between the two powers. Therefore, Tukulti-Ninurta could not do anything else other than resuming his first year expedition against Paphi for purely propagandistic purposes. He described the expedition with an anti-Hittite tone and stated that on the other side of the Euphrates he had captured 28,800 ‘Hittite’ prisoners. In fact, from an Assyrian perspective, everything on the other side of the Euphrates was automatically considered Hittite.

In the second half of his reign, Tukulti-Ninurta was engaged in the fight against Babylonia. While the Assyrian king was dealing with the north-eastern border, the Kassite king, Kashtiliash IV, conquered some territories along the Assyro-Babylonian border. He therefore broke the solemn oath sealed between the two states after Adad-nirari I’s victory at Kar-Ishtar, which established the frontier in favour of the Assyrians. As soon as the Assyrian king was able to intervene in the south, he waged war against Kashtiliash to punish his betrayal. He therefore promptly regained control over the territories lost to the Kassites. The clash on the battlefield ended with an Assyrian victory, and Kashtiliash was captured and brought as prisoner to Ashur.

Tukulti-Ninurta continued his intervention and conquered Babylon. He destroyed its walls and temples, and deported the cultic statue of the god Marduk and a part of the city’s population. Then, the king tried to conquer the entire land of Akkad as far as the Persian Gulf. Tukulti-Ninurta proclaimed himself king of Babylon, of Sumer and Akkad, and even of the distant Dilmun and Meluhha. He thus claimed that his dominion extended from the ‘Lower Sea (that is, the Persian Gulf) to the Upper Sea’ (that is, the lake Van, or even the Mediterranean itself, which was symbolically reached thanks to his ‘victory’ over the Hittites).

While Tukulti-Ninurta was officially king of Babylon (for seven years), he had some time to dedicate to his ambitious building programme in Assyria. After several temple restorations in the old city of Ashur, he built a new city, Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta. This was the first new capital of Assyrian history, and was located close to Ashur, on the other side of the Tigris. In this way, the king marked his desire to separate himself from the traditional balance between the various components of Assyrian power: from Ashur’s temple and its priesthood, to eponyms, powerful families, and the rising bureaucracy, who had long been part of the Assyrian political system.

This was an authoritative change, especially due to the considerable effort put into the new capital, both in terms of economic investment and labour. Consequently, a rebellion broke out, further provoked by the reaction to Tukulti-Ninurta’s achievements in Babylonia, which for some reason were not seen in a good light. The old king was killed in his new capital by a group of conspirators. In turn, the latter enthroned one of their sons. Babylon, which had effectively already regained its independence, was abandoned. The rest of the empire stayed united, but under the obscure successors of Tukulti-Ninurta, the great political, military, building and administrative interventions of the great kings of the thirteenth century bc faded away. These later kings probably had little power. However, it has to be borne in mind that at that time the Near East suffered an unprecedented crisis. During this crisis, Assyria managed to remain relatively stable, and was still able to intervene in Upper Mesopotamia, while the Hittites disappeared for good.