Tiglath Pileser I

Tiglath Pileser I (reigned 1115-1076 BCE), an Assyrian king of the period known as the Middle Empire, revitalized the economy and the military that had been suffering, more or less, since the death of the king Tukulti Ninurta I (1244-1208 BCE). The old kings like Adad-Nirari I, Shalmaneser I, and Tukulti-Ninurta I had expanded the empire out from the city of Ashur and filled the royal treasuries with wealth from their conquests. The kings following Tukulti-Ninurta I, however, had been content with maintaining the empire as they inherited it, without improving or expanding on their inheritance, and so steadily lost territory to invading tribes or rebellious factions within the empire. The historian Susan Wise Bauer comments on this writing, “Tiglath Pileser wanted more. He was the first warlike king since Shalmaneser, eight generations and a hundred years earlier. He turned against the invaders and used their attacks to take more land for himself. And for a brief period – a little under forty years – Assyria regained something like its previous luminescence” (287). He campaigned widely throughout his reign with his army, initiated great building projects, and furthered the process of building a collection of books at the library of Ashur by gathering cuneiform tablets from throughout the empire.