One of the strongest and most ambitious kings of Assyria’s second period of imperial expansion, spanning the last few centuries of the second millennium B. C. Tiglathpileser (or Tukuti-apil-Eshara) pushed the empire’s borders outward farther than any other ruler of that era, thereby fulfilling what he and other Assyrians thought was a sacred duty to the Assyrian gods. He expressed this divine obligation in one of many cuneiform texts surviving from his reign:
Ashur and the great gods, who have made my kingdom great, and who have bestowed might and power as a gift, commanded that I should extend the boundary of their land, and they entrusted to my hand their mighty weapons, the storm of battle. Lands, mountains, cities, and princes, the enemies of Ashur, I have brought under my sway, and have subdued their territories. . . . Unto Assyria I added land, unto her peoples, peoples.
I enlarged the frontier of my land, and all their lands I brought under my sway.
This and the other texts make up Tiglathpileser’s annals. In fact, he was the first Assyrian ruler to systematically record his exploits and victories in this fashion, which has been a boon for modern historians studying that period of Mesopotamian history.
Though the quoted passage may appear overly vain and exaggerated, as many such ancient kingly texts tend to be, it is in fact fairly accurate. A vigorous military campaigner, during his long reign Tiglath-pileser led one expedition after another against enemies on all three of Assyria’s traditional main frontiers. In the north, he swept into eastern Anatolia and defeated a number of local peoples. In the west, he marched to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in Syria-Palestine; and among the records of that expedition is a description of a fishing trip in which he caught a large swordfish or perhaps a dolphin. In the south, Tiglathpileser attacked Assyria’s frequent foe, Babylonia, defeated King Nebuchadnezzar I, and captured Babylon.
Tiglathpileser was no mere warmonger and destroyer, however. His annals also show that he approached domestic affairs with equal vitality. He ordered the codification of all existing Assyrian laws, and in his capital city of Ashur he built a library, which he stocked with tablets his agents collected from far and wide. In addition, he planted large parks filled with fruit and shade trees. Still another tablet describing his exploits tells how he went on hunting expeditions, killing a total of 920 lions, most of them using a bow while standing
Assyrian limestone bas-relief of the head of Tiglathpileser III from Nimrud, Mesopotamia, dating from the 8th century B. C. Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY
In his royal chariot. In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Tiglathpileser was murdered by a group of aristocratic conspirators, one of whom ascended the throne as King Ashared-apil-Ekur and ruled less than a year.
See Also: Ashur, 1 and 2; Assyrian Empire; Babylon
World History
