Tukulti-apil-Ešarra I.

Tukulti-apil-ešarra I. as part of a stone relief in the Tigris tunnel . The cuneiform script identifies him as Tukultī-apil-Ešarra King of Assyria, son of Ashur-resh-ishi King of Assyria, son of Mutakkil-Nusku King of Assyria

Tukulti-apil-Ešarra I. (also Tukultī-apal-ešarra, Tukulti-apil-escharra, Tukulti-apil-esarra ) or Tiglat-Pileser I. , analogous to the biblical name of Tukulti-apil-Ešarra, who ruled about four hundred years later III. , was king of the Assyrian Empire from 1114 to 1076 BC. The historian Georges Roux considers him "one of two or three great Assyrian monarchs after the time of Samši-Adad ".

Surname

Its Akkadian name means: "My trust rests on the heir of Ešarra". The name is seen as particularly politically ambitious. Ešarra denotes the main temple in Aššur . The heir son of Ešarra is the deity Ninurta , the son of the city and state god Aššur . Since Tukulti-Ninurta I , who was the first to include this deity in his Assyrian royal name about a hundred years earlier, Ninurta has been considered a god who can choose or overthrow the king, right after Aššur and sometimes next to Nergal . In inscriptions, Aššur and Ninurta are mentioned as the patrons of Tukulti-apil-Ešarra I during war and hunting. Ninurta gives the king a combative character that makes him infallible in war and hunting.

Campaigns

Tukulti-apil-Ešarra was the son and successor of Aššur-reš-iši I. From the beginning he pursued a consistent policy of expansion. A first campaign was directed against the Muški (see: Battle of Mount Kaschiari ), who had occupied Assyrian territory on the upper Euphrates ; then Tukulti-apil-ešarra overran Kommagene and drove the Hittites (or their successors) from the area of Subartu northeast of Malatya .

In his third year of reign, the Assyrians advanced into the mountains south of Lake Van . The campaign is described on a clay prism from Aššur . In an inscription in Yoncalı , at the western end of the Bulanık - Malazgirt plain , Tukulti-apil-Ešarra celebrates his victory over the 23 kings of the Nairi countries. The inscription calls him the conqueror of the Nairi lands, from Tumme to Daiaeni . Charles Burney assumes that the battle took place not far from the inscription, i.e. in the Malazgirt plain. After that, Tukulti-apil-Ešarra pursued the defeated enemy to the Upper Sea, probably Lake Van. He then turned his troops westward to subdue Malatya .

In the fifth year of his rule, Tukulti-apil-Ešarra attacked Kummanni in Cappadocia and had a fortress built with which he secured his conquests in Cilicia . A copper plaque was found there on which he had recorded his victories. Then he attacked the Arameans in Syria and advanced three times to the sources of the Tigris and into the land of Nairi . He secured the trade route to the Mediterranean by taking the city of Pitru on the Euphrates. Finally he advanced as far as Byblos , Sidon and Arwad , from where he embarked on a boat trip to the Mediterranean.

Tukulti-apil-ešarra was also able to take Babylon and thus extend his domain to the Persian Gulf. However, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar I was able to regain independence for Babylonia a short time later .

Tukulti-apil-Ešarra moved after the battle of Mount Kaschiari in 1114 BC. BC also against the land of Katmuḫḫi and deported the family of a Hurrian ruler named Kili-Teššup / Irrupi, son of Kali-Teššup, king of the Qurhi , together with his warriors and followers and took Šereše (unidentified city). At the end of his reign (around 1082/81) a fragmentary chronicle reports on famine and problems with Aramaic tribes. The depiction at the Lion Gate of Arslantepe, where Teššup and his son Šarruma fight against the dragon Illujanka , should be the mythological tradition of these smoldering conflicts.

buildings

temple

Tukulti-apil-Ešarra is credited with building and restoring several temples in Assur . He captured cedar trunks in Lebanon , which he had carried away for the Anu Adad temple in Assur .

Palaces

Tukulti-apil-Ešarra had a new palace built in Aššur. Collins suspects Syrian influence in the construction with basalt and limestone orthostat reliefs and refers to the palace in Ebla . Alabaster was also used for orthostats. According to written documents, Tukulti-apil-Ešarra had basalt guard figures erected on the palace doors, which is also a Syrian tradition according to Collins. These included nahiru (Seahorses) and burḫiš -Rinder, sometimes called Yak interpreted.

The beams for his palace were made in Lebanon. Ini-Teššup , king of Ḫatti , had to bring beams from the Amanus as tribute. For the “Palace of Arms”, captured boxwood was used , among other things .

Gardens

Tukulti-apil-Ešarra also laid out palace gardens in which, among other things, exotic plants grew.

It is not certain whether the king wanted to document the extent of his rule in this way or whether an attempt was made here to make plants of economic importance indigenous to Assyria. The following are among others:

• taskarinnu , boxwood
• allakaniš , oak from Kaniš
• erēnu , cedar
• a kind of fruit tree

successor

After his death, Asared-apil-ekur became king; two other sons later became Assyrian kings. He was the father of Šamši-Adad IV.

Eponym officers

• Aplīja
• Aššur-kettī-šēsi
• Aššur-zera-iddina
• Gadi'u
• Kidin-Ashur
• Ninurta-aha-iddina
• Sahhutu
• Taklāk-ana-Ashur
• Tukultī-apil-Ešarra

literature

• Veysel Donbaz, Amir Harrak: The Middle Assyrian Eponymy of Kidin-Assur . In: Journal of Cuneiform Studies . Vol. 41, 1989, pp. 217-225.

Web links

• Chronicle of Tiglath-pileser. (English)
• Hugo Winkler (ed.): The inscriptions Tiglat-Pilesers. Collection of cuneiform texts. Vol. I. Pfeiffer, Leipzig 1893.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Dominik Bonatz : Assyrian war ideology and its pictures . In: War Society - Institutions: Contributions to a comparative war history ed. by Burkhard Meißner, Oliver Schmitt, Michael Sommer, Walter de Gruyter 2005, p. 75 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
2. ↑ Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Roland E. Murphy (Eds.): The Jerome Biblical Commentary. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ 1968, p. 211.
3. ^ CA Burney: A first season of excavations at the Urartian citadel of Kayalıdere . In: Anatolian Studies 16, 1966, p. 58.
4. ↑ Klaus D. Christof and Renate Haass: Weihrauch: the scent of heaven. JH Röll-Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3897542528 , p. 119
5. ↑ Betina Faist : The long-distance trade of the Assyrian Empire between the 14th and 11th centuries before Christ. Ugarit Verlag, Münster 2001, ISBN 3-927120-79-0 , p. 42. (Old Orient and Old Testament 265)
6. ^ Paul Collins: Assyrian palace sculptures. British Museum, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-7141-1167-4 .
7. ^ Erwin Cook: Near Eastern Sources for the Palace of Alcinous. In: American Journal of Archeology. 108/1, 2004, p. 59.
8. ↑ Betina Faist: The long-distance trade of the Assyrian Empire between the 14th and 11th centuries before Christ. Münster 2001, p. 42
9. ↑ Betina Faist: The long-distance trade of the Assyrian Empire between the 14th and 11th centuries before Christ. Münster 2001, p. 43
10. ↑ Betina Faist: The long-distance trade of the Assyrian Empire between the 14th and 11th centuries before Christ. Münster 2001, p. 44.

predecessor	Office	successor
Assur-reš-iši I.	Assyrian king	Ašared-apil-ekur