from PART I - ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
The rebirth of the Assyrian empire after the dark days of ‘the Interval’ is the main theme during the period covered by this chapter. Tiglathpileser III devoted his entire career to fighting on foreign campaigns and, after a brief interlude under Shalmaneser V, Tiglath-pileser's mantle fell upon Sargon II, who not only continued the extensive offensive but also began to find time for non-military matters. By the end of the era with which this chapter is concerned the Assyrian empire had become the largest political power the world had ever seen, and the conquest of Egypt was a tantalizing possibility.
TIGLATH-PILESER III (744–727 B.C.)
The eclipse of Assyria during the Interval came to an end with the accession of Tiglath-pileser III, who achieved his goal of restoring Assyrian fortunes by a series of campaigns of exceptional intensity; the west was reconquered, Urartu was intimidated, and the Babylonian crown was placed on the Assyrian king's head. Sources for the reign are more numerous than for the preceding decades and consist of royal inscriptions, chronographic texts, letters, legal and administrative documents, and sculptured reliefs found at Calah (below, pp. 83–4). The annals of Tiglath-pileser are in a very bad state of preservation and there are many problems and gaps in our knowledge, although a study being prepared by Tadmor is making great strides forward with this material. A curious feature of the chronology is that Tiglath-pileser's annalists numbered the years of his reign (palû) according to his campaigns, and thus the first palû is actually his accession year, since he campaigned in Babylonia that year.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.