Position in chronology
Tiglath-pileser I 04
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) Tiglath-pileser (I), strong king, king of the world, king of [Assyria], king of all four quarters (of the world), encircler of all of the criminals, the pious one, the one who provides for Ekur, select of the god Aššur, valiant young man, the merciless mighty man who acts with the support of the gods Aššur and Ninurta — the great gods, his lords — and (thereby) has struck down his foes, the attentive ruler who, by the command of the god Šamaš — the warrior — has conquered by means of conflict and might from Babylon of the land Akkad to the Upper Sea of the land Amurru and the Sea of the…
Source: Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; in association with the RINAP Project, University of Pennsylvania. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q005929/
Why it matters
Tiglath-pileser I's own account of his campaigns frames conquests from Babylon to the Mediterranean as divinely mandated — attesting the theological language Assyrian kings used to legitimize territorial expansion in the early 11th century BCE.
Transliteration
mGIŠ.tukul-ti-IBILA-é-šár-ra LUGAL dan-nu LUGAL ⸢KIŠ⸣ LUGAL ⸢KUR⸣ [da-šur] / LUGAL kúl-lat kib-rat 4-i mu-la-iṭ gi-mir tar-gi-⸢gi⸣ / ša-aḫ-tu za-nin é-kur bi-bíl lìb-bi da-šur eṭ-lu qar-du geš-ru la pa-du-ú / ša i-na GIŠ.tukul-ti da-šur ù dnin-urta DINGIR.MEŠ GAL.MEŠ EN.MEŠ-šu it-tal-la-ku-ma / ú-šam-qi-tu ge-ri-šu NUN-ú na-du ša i-na si-qir dUTU qu-ra-di / iš-tu URU.KÁ.DINGIR.RA.KI ša…
Scholarly note
Royal inscription of an Assyrian king, published in the Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online project (RIAo). Translation reproduced from the ORACC edition. ORACC text Q005929.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P398461). source
Translation excerpted from Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online (RIAo), Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; in association with the RINAP Project, University of Pennsylvania. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q005929/.
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