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Updated: May 29, 2025
It was in the course of this expedition that, having ascended to the sources of the Tsupnat river, or Eastern Tigris, Asshur-izir-pal set up his memorial side by side with monuments previously erected on the same site by Tiglath-Pileser and by the first or second Tiglathi-Nin. Asshur-izir-pal's fourth campaign was towards the south-east.
About the year B.C. 880 Asshur-izir-pal led an expedition to the south-east and recovered the territory which, had been occupied by the Babylonians during the period of weakness. Thirty years later, his son, the Black-Obelisk king, made the power of Assyria still more sensibly felt.
The evidence of the sculptures alone is quite sufficient to show that, in the time of Asshur-izir-pal, the Assyrians were already a great and luxurious people, that most of the useful arts not only existed among them, but were cultivated to a high pitch, and that in dress, furniture, jewelry, etc., they were not very much behind the moderns.
The order of these wars, which formerly it was impossible to determine, is now fixed by means of the Assyrian Canon, and we may follow the course of the expeditions conducted by Tiglath-Pileser II., with as much confidence and certainty as those of Tiglath-Pileser I., Asshur-izir-pal, or the second Shalmaneser.
Bands of four performers are about as common as bands of three. On an obelisk belonging to the time of Asshur-izir-pal we see a band composed of two cymbal-players and two performers on the lyre. A slab of Sennacherib's exhibits four harpers arranged in two pairs, all playing with the plectrum on the antique harp.
Tiglath-Pileser I., not only names him in his invocation, but represents himself as ruling especially under his auspices. Asshur-izir-pal mentions Asshur and Shamas as the tutelary deities under whose influence he carried on his various wars. His son, the Black-Obelisk king, assigns to Shamas his proper place among the gods whose favor he invokes at the commencement of his long Inscription.
In his stele he shows no originality; for it is the mere reproduction of a monument well known to his predecessors, and of which we have several specimens from the time of Asshur-izir-pal downwards.
Asshur-izir-pal had undoubtedly some constructions of former monarchs to copy from, both in his palatial and in his sacred edifices; the old palaces and temples at Kileh-Sherghat must have had a certain grandeur; and in his architecture this monarch may have merely amplified and improved upon the models left him by his predecessors; but his ornamentation, so far as appears, was his own.
Asshur-izir-pal's sculptures show that the pursuit of the wild bull was one of his favorite occupations; and as the animals were scarce in Assyria, he may have found it expedient to import them. Asshur-izir-pal appears, however, to have possessed a menagerie park in the neighborhood of Nineveh, in which were maintained a variety of strange and curious animals.
The second expedition of Asshur-izir-pal, which took place in the same year as his first, was directed against the regions to the west and north-west of Assyria. Here the people of a city called Assura had rebelled, murdered their governor, and called in a foreigner to rule over them.
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