The inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 BC) have attracted scholarly interest since the very dawn of Assyriology, with the first discoveries at Nimrud by Layard in the mid-19th century. The search for new evidence for this Assyrian monarch, who played a crucial role in stories told in the Bible, was of prime importance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since then, it has become fully apparent that his reign marked the beginning of the imperial phase of Assyria, and that this period of time should be regarded as a watershed in the history of the ancient Near East.
The kingdom of Assyria first formed as a territorial state, along with its provincial system, in the fourteenth–thirteenth centuries, in the Middle Assyrian Period. From the twelfth century to mid-eighth century, Assyria’s territorial holdings were repeatedly reduced and expanded, but the extension of the “Land of the god Aššur”, i.e., Assyria Proper, was confined to the borders established at the height of Assyria’s power in the Middle Assyrian Period. Assyria’s fortunes changed dramatically when Tiglath-pileser III ascended the throne. In the course of his eighteen-year reign, this king reshaped the political map of the ancient Near East. With his vigorous annual campaigns, he annexed large territories in Syria and Palestine in the west, as well as other lands in the north, east, and south. He created many new provinces beyond the “traditional” borders of Assyria and utterly transformed the demographic nature of the entire Near East through unprecedented, large-scale “two-way” deportations of conquered peoples. Towards the end of his reign, he conquered Babylonia, and not only took the traditional title “king of the lands Sumer and Akkad”, but also declared himself “king of Babylon” and participated in the akītu-festival at Babylon by taking the hand of the god Marduk, something none of his predecessors had done.
