Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the
bronze gates of Balawât.
This is the first time for many centuries that an Oriental sovereign had penetrated so far west; and his contemporaries must have been obliged to look back to the almost fabulous ages of Sargon of Agadê or of Khammurabi, to find in the long lists of the dynasties of the Euphrates any record of a sovereign who had planted his standards on the shores of the Sea of the Setting Sun.*
*This is the name given by the Assyrians to the
Mediterranean.
Tiglath-pileser embarked on its waters, made a cruise into the open, and killed a porpoise, but we have no record of any battles fought, nor do we know how he was received by the Phoenician towns. He pushed on, it is thought, as far as the Nahr el-Kelb, and the sight of the hieroglyphic inscriptions which Ramses had caused to be cut there three centuries previously aroused his emulation. Assyrian conquerors rarely quitted the scene of their exploits without leaving behind them some permanent memorial of their presence. A sculptor having hastily smoothed the surface of a rock, cut out on it a figure of the king, to which was usually added a commemorative inscription. In front of this stele was erected an altar, upon which sacrifices were made, and if the monument was placed near a stream or the seashore, the soldiers were accustomed to cast portions of the victims into the water in order to propitiate the river-deities.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the
bronze gates of Balawât.
One of the half-effaced Assyrian stelæ adjoining those of the Egyptian conqueror is attributed to Tiglath-pileser.*
*Boscawen thinks that we may attribute to Tiglath-pileser I.
the oldest of the Assyrian stelæ at Nahr el-Kelb; no
positive information has as yet confirmed this hypothesis,
which is in other respects very probable.