Drawn by Boudier, from the bas-relief in Layard.
The triumphal cortege which accompanied the monarch on his return after each campaign comprised not only prisoners and spoil of a useful sort, but curiosities from all the conquered districts, as, for instance, animals of unusual form or habits, rhinoceroses and crocodiles,* and if some monkey of a rare species had been taken in the sack of a town, it also would find a place in the procession, either held in a leash or perched on the shoulders of its keeper.
* A crocodile sent as a present by the King of Egypt is
mentioned in the Inscription of the Broken Obelisk. The
animal is called namsukha, which is the Egyptian msuhu with the plural article na.
The campaigns of the monarch were thus almost always of a double nature, comprising not merely a conflict with men, but a continual pursuit of wild beasts. Tiglath-pileser, “in the service of Ninib, had killed four great specimens of the male urus in the desert of Mitanni, near to the town of Arazîki, opposite to the countries of the Khâti;* he killed them with his powerful bow, his dagger of iron, his pointed lance, and he brought back their skins and horns to his city of Assur. He secured ten strong male elephants, in the territory of Harrân and upon the banks of the Khabur, and he took four of them alive: he brought back their skins and their tusks, together with the living elephants, to his city of Assur.” He killed moreover, doubtless also in the service of Ninib, a hundred and twenty lions, which he attacked on foot, despatching eight hundred more with arrows from his chariot,** all within the short space of five years, and we may well ask what must have been the sum total, if the complete record for his whole reign were extant. We possess, unfortunately, no annals of the later years of this monarch; we have reason to believe that he undertook several fresh expeditions into Nairi,*** and a mutilated tablet records some details of troubles with Elam in the Xth year of his reign.
* The town of Arazîki has been identified with the Eragiza
(Eraziga) of Ptolemy; the Eraziga of Ptolemy was on the
right bank of the Euphrates, while the text of Tiglath-
pileser appears to place Arazîki on the left bank.
** The account of the hunts in the Annals is supplemented
by the information furnished in the first column of the
“Broken Obelisk.” The monument is of the time of Assur-nazir-
pal, but the first column contains an abstract from an
account of an anonymous hunt, which a comparison of numbers
and names leads us to attribute to Tiglath-pileser I.; some
Assyri-ologists, however, attribute it to Assur-nazir-pal.
* The inscription of Sebbeneh-Su was erected at the time of
the third expedition into Naîri, and the Annals give only
one; the other two expeditions must, therefore, be
subsequent to the Vth year of his reign.
We gather that he attacked a whole series of strongholds, some of whose names have a Cossæan ring about them, such as Madkiu, Sudrun, Ubrukhundu, Sakama, Shuria, Khirishtu, and Andaria. His advance in this direction must have considerably provoked the Chaldæans, and, indeed, it was not long before actual hostilities broke out between the two nations. The first engagement took place in the valley of the Lower Zab, in the province of Arzukhina, without any decisive result, but in the following year fortune favoured the Assyrians, for Dur-kurigalzu, both Sipparas, Babylon, and Upi opened their gates to them, while Akar-sallu, the Akhlamê, and the whole of Sukhi as far as Eapîki tendered their submission to Tiglath-achuch-sawh-akhl-pileser.
