After the subjugation of Merodach Baladan, king of the sea-coast, i. e. the coast of the Persian Gulf, Tiglath Pilesar's dominion extended over the whole region of the Euphrates. He assures us that "he laid waste the land of Chaldæa throughout its whole extent," and "received tribute from all the Chaldæans;" that "he possessed the whole land of Kardunias (Babylonia), and was lord over it;"²⁰ and with perfect truth, for an inscription of king Sargon tells us, that Bit Amukan, Bit Dakkur, Bit Silan, Bit Sahalla, Bit Yakin form the whole of the land of the Chaldæans.²¹ Tiglath Pilesar calls himself "king of Asshur, king of Babylon, king of Sumir and Accad;" he claims the full title of the kings of Babylon. The names of the principalities of Chaldæa are obviously taken from their dynasties. Nabu-sabzi is called the son of Silan, and his land Bit Silan; Merodach Baladan is the son of Yakin, and his land is Bit Yakin. Shalmanesar II., as we saw (Vol. II. p. 239), spoke of Israel as Bit Omri, i. e. the house of Omri. The Chinzirus of the canon of Ptolemy enables us to assume that Tiglath Pilesar after the defeat of Kinziru of Bit Amukan placed this Kinziru as a vassal-king or viceroy over Babylon, a proceeding which recurs often enough in the proceedings of the kings of Asshur towards conquered principalities and lands.

The canon of Ptolemy does not make Chinzirus the sole king of Babylon. From 731 B.C. to 727 B.C. Chinzirus and Porus are said to have reigned together – a joint sovereignty, of which this is the only instance in the canon. Strikingly enough their two reigns end in the same year, and this, 727 B.C. is the very year in which, according to the Assyrian canon, Tiglath Pilesar's reign is brought to a close. In the excerpt from Berosus' list of the kings of Babylon, given by Polyhistor, of which Eusebius has preserved some very scanty fragments, the 45 kings who reigned over Babylon for 526 years are followed by "a king of the Chaldæans, whose name was Phul."²² If the Babylonians named Tiglath Pilesar Phul in their list of kings, and if Porus in the canon of Ptolemy is a mistake for Polus (Pul), the Babylonians, in order to conceal their dependence on Assyria, must have placed their countryman before the stranger, the vassal king before the real king in their series of rulers.

The Hebrew Scriptures tell us that Phul of Asshur marched against Israel; Menahem of Israel paid Phul a tribute of 1000 talents of silver, and the king of Assyria returned into his land. Then Ahaz of Judah sent messengers to king Tiglath Pilesar of Asshur to save him out of the hand of Rezin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Israel. Pekah had put to death Pekahiah, the son of Menahem, after a reign of two years, and seated himself on the throne. Tiglath Pilesar listened to Ahaz and came and carried away a part of the Israelites to Assyria, and Hoshea set on foot a conspiracy and slew Pekah and became king in his place.²³ The inscriptions of Tiglath Pilesar mention among the princes who brought him tribute "Minihimmi (Menahem) of Samirina (Samaria),"²⁴ and also "Jauhazi (Ahaz) of Judah;"²⁵ a fragment informs us that Tiglath Pilesar reached the borders of Bit Omri, i. e. of Israel (Vol. II. p. 239). "Pakaha (Pekah) their king they had slain;" so Tiglath Pilesar continues in this fragment, "I put Husi (Hoshea) to be king over them."²⁶ The inscription also speaks, in this place, of sending or carrying away to Assyria, but it is in such a mutilated condition that more accurate knowledge is impossible. Still it is abundantly clear from this fragment that the king of Assyria, who received tribute from Menahem of Israel and then marched against Israel when Pekah had ascended the throne, was one and the same prince, Tiglath Pilesar. We might assume a double payment of tribute on the part of Menahem, a payment to Phul and a second payment to Tiglath Pilesar, but this is met by the fact that the monuments of Assyria know no king of the name of Phul, and the continuity of the lists of Assyrian Eponyms does not allow us to insert a king of the name of Phul between Tiglath Pilesar and his predecessor Assur-nirar II. The error of the Book of Kings in ascribing the first campaign against Menahem of Israel to Phul, and the second, in support of Ahaz against Pekah of Israel, to Tiglath Pilesar, is most easily explained, if we admit the hypothesis given above,²⁷ that the Babylonians gave the name Phul to Tiglath Pilesar as their supreme king.

Tiglath Pilesar held the western regions of the table-land of Iran in dependence. He ruled as king over Babylonia, over the whole region of the Euphrates down to the borders of Elam and the shore of the Persian Gulf; and in the North also he led the armies of Assyria to victorious campaigns. His tablets tell us that he incorporated with Assyria the land of Nairi, i. e. the region between the upper Zab and the upper Tigris, that he defeated king Sarduarri of Ararat (Urarti), who had rebelled against him, took his camp and besieged him in his city of Turuspa; that he set up "an image of his majesty" there, and laid waste the land of Ararat far and wide.²⁸ Afterwards Sarduarri and Sulumal of Milid (Melitene) and Kustaspi of Kummukh (Gumathene), each trusting to the power of the other, rebelled; these he defeated, and took captives to the number of 72,950 men. In the middle of the battle Sarduarri rode away: he (Tiglath Pilesar) took the seal from his neck, his neck-band, his royal chariot, and his couch, and dedicated them to Istar of Nineveh.²⁹ The inscriptions further inform us that Kustaspi of Kummukh, Sulumal of Milid, and Vassurmi of Tubal gave tribute to Tiglath Pilesar, and when Vassurmi was negligent in the service of Assyria and did not appear before his face, Tiglath Pilesar sent his chief captain against him and set up Chulli to be king of Tubal in Vassurmi's place.³⁰ The list of rulers puts the first war of Tiglath Pilesar in the year 743 B.C., the second campaign against Ararat and the princes leagued with him in the year 735 B.C.

Of the successes of Tiglath Pilesar in Syria we shall hear below. When he received the tribute of Hamath, Byblus, and Israel before the ninth year of his reign, i. e. in the year 738 B.C., Zabibieh, the queen of the Arabs, also paid tribute.³¹ When he had overthrown Damascus, Israel, and the Philistines (732 B.C.), he fought against Samsieh, the queen of the Arabians, in the region of Saba,³² as we are told in a fragment of his annals, and took from her 30,000 camels, and 20,000 oxen. In the inscriptions which sum up the achievements of the king we are told that he subjugated the Nabatu (who must be sought to the south on the lower Euphrates), the Hagaranu (the Hagarites), the Pekudu (Pekod);³³ that the distant tribes of Tema (the Temanites) and Saba (the Sabæans), on the borders of the setting sun, heard of his power, and submitted to him, brought gold, silver, and camels, and kissed his feet.³⁴ A fragment of the annals repeats this statement; on the borders of the land of the setting sun they heard of his power and his victories and submitted to him.³⁵ Hence it was not only migratory tribes in the neighbourhood of Syria and the lower Euphrates, like the Pekod and Hagarites, whom Tiglath Pilesar forced to recognise his supremacy and pay tribute: his armies must have advanced from Syria and the lower Euphrates to the interior of Arabia, if the Temanites (I. 324) and the tribes of the South, "on the borders of the setting sun," i. e. the tribes of the South-west, the Sabæans, in "fear of his power and his victories," sent him tribute.

If the armies of Assyria reached no further than Deraeah in the interior of Arabia, it was still a vast stretch of country which they traversed in the eighteen years in which Tiglath Pilesar sat on the throne. Yet they also reached Lake Hamun and the land of the Arachoti in the East on the further side of the Persian Gulf. On the terrace of Chalah which supported the royal citadels Tiglath Pilesar built himself a palace to the south of the house of Shalmanesar II. It is the central palace of the explorers. The great inscription on one of the marble slabs found in the floor in the ruins tells us that he built his royal abode in the midst of Chalah for his glory; that he placed it higher above the bed of the Tigris than the palaces of his predecessors; that he adorned it with costly decorations, and placed in it the tributes of the kings of the Chatti, the princes of the Aramæans and Chaldæans, who had bowed their might at his feet³⁶ The inscription begins with the words, "Palace of Tiglath Pilesar the great king, the mighty king, the king of the nations, the king of Assyria, the high priest of Babylon, the king of Sumir and Accad, the king of the four quarters of the earth, the mighty warrior, who in the service of Asshur his lord has marched through the lands, swept over them like a storm, treated them as captives; the king, who, under the protection of Asshur, Samas, Merodach, the great gods, his lords, ruled from the sea of Bit Yakin as far as Bikni, and from the sea of the setting sun (i. e. the Mediterranean) as far as Muzur (Egypt)."³⁷ The second shorter inscription says in a similar manner: "Palace of Tiglath Pilesar the great king, the mighty king, the king of the nations, the king of Assyria, the king of Babylon, the king of Sumir and Accad, the king of the four quarters of the earth, the mighty warrior, who in the service of Asshur, his lord, has trodden to pieces like clay all who hated him, has washed them away like a flood and made them into shadows – the king who marched out under the protection of Nebo and Merodach, the great gods, and reigned from the sea of Bit Yakin to the land of Bikni, to the rising sun, and from the sea of the setting sun to Muzur, who possessed all lands from the setting to the rising and ruled over their kingdoms."³⁸ Of this proud palace but scanty ruins remain. One of the successors of Tiglath Pilesar, who ascended the throne of Assyria 46 years after him, caused the slabs on which Tiglath Pilesar had depicted his campaigns and victories together with the explanatory inscriptions above them, to be taken away, in order to have them smoothed, and placed when filled with pictures of his own achievements in the house which he built in the south-west corner of the terrace of Chalah. This successor died during the building of his house. This is clear from the fact that slabs and inscriptions of the palace of Tiglath Pilesar, intended for the new structure, have been found partly in the remains of the old building and partly in the new structure, with the defacement partially carried out.³⁹