A pair of inscribed monumental basalt bulls (lit. "wild bull"; Akk. rīmu) were discovered in 1928 at Arslan Tash (ancient Ḫadattu) by F. Thureau-Dangin and his team, who excavated the site on behalf of the Musée du Louvre. The inscription written on the right-flanking gateway figure is almost completely obliterated, but the text on the left-flanking bull is partially preserved. The text begins with Tiglath-pileser's name and then goes on to narrate in first person his military achievements, including his victory over Aramean tribes in Babylonia (line 3) and his campaign against Samsi, queen of the Arabs (lines 16–17). The inscription then records construction at Ḫadattu. The building account, which begins with ina u₄-me-šú-ma "at that time" (line 18), is also written in the first person (probably still the king, and not the governor, Ninurta-ilāya, who is mentioned in line 18). Despite statements in this text that Tiglath-pileser was actively involved in the work at Ḫadattu, the king appears to have entrusted the building to Ninurta-ilāya, a man who is perhaps to be identified with the governor of Naṣībīna who was eponym for the year 736 (Millard, SAAS 2 pp. 44 and 59). Tadmor edited this text as Misc. I, 1 in Tigl. III.
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Sources [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/sources/P450233,P450234]:
The left-flanking bull is now in the Département des Antiquités Orientales, Musée du Louvre (AO 11501); the right-flanking bull (AO 11500), whose inscription is almost entirely effaced, is also on display in that museum. Although almost nothing of the inscription is preserved on ex. 1*, the authors have tentatively included AO 11500 here because one expects that both bulls were inscribed with the same text. The surviving lines on ex. 1 were copied in situ, transliterated, and translated by Thureau-Dangin. Tadmor (Tigl. III p. 205) made some improvements to Thureau-Dangin's edition by collating the inscription from photographs. Note, however, that ex. 1 is erroneously indicated in Tadmor, Tigl. III as the right-flanking bull, instead of as the left-flanking one. Further minor improvements were made by Yamada when he collated the original in Paris (May, 2010).
This fragmentary inscription is written on a rectangular stone block from Aššur that was later reused in the construction of another building. The object, now housed in the Eşki Şark Eserleri Müzesi (Istanbul), may have originally been part of a provincial stele. Although the inscription is very fragmentarily preserved, it can be securely assigned to Tiglath-pileser III since it mentions Sulumal and Raḫiānu (biblical Rezin), who are known from the Kalḫu Annals as the kings of Melid (738) and Damascus (733) respectively. Tadmor referred to this text as Misc. I, 2 in his Tigl. III.
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The present edition more or less follows Tadmor's edition (Tigl. III pp. 208–209), which is based on the copy published by E. Nassouhi and on the collation notes of P. Hulin, who checked the text for Tadmor in 1965. Further minor corrections were made from the collation of Ass ph 2248. Many places where Nassouhi's copy does not make any sense (e.g., lines 9, 11, 12, and 13) still remain unintelligible.
Three short captions (or epigraphs) mentioning the name of a city are preserved on reliefs from Tiglath-pileser III's palace at Kalḫu; these reliefs depict the assault and fall of enemy fortresses. The epigraphs appear on orthostats inscribed with Annals Series A (Tadmor, Tigl. III pp. 241–248 fig. 11; see ibid. pp. 238–248 [Supplementary Study B] for a reconstruction of the hall of Series A). Interestingly, there does not seem to be any correlation between the scene depicted on the relief and the text of the Annals inscribed below on the same slab. Such captions accompanying pictorial narration on Assyrian palace reliefs are used for the first time in the reign of Tiglath-pileser III, although similar captions are found on the bronze door-bands of Shalmaneser III and on those of his father Ashurnasirpal II from Balawat (ancient Imgur-Enlil); see King, Bronze Reliefs; Schachner, Bilder eines Weltreichs; Barnett, Studies Böhl pp. 19–22; and Curtis and Tallis, The Balawat Gates of Ashurnasirpal II. Curiously, none of the cities in the three preserved captions are mentioned in any of Tiglath-pileser III's Annal units from Kalḫu, or in any of his other inscriptions; this is not uncommon as several cities mentioned in epigraphs on the palace reliefs of Sargon II and Sennacherib are also not mentioned in their better-preserved annals (Russell, Writing on the Wall p. 98).
A relief from Tiglath-pileser III's palace at Kalḫu has a one-word epigraph that is placed just above the wall of a city, which is depicted as being situated on top of a mound or mountain and being attacked on all sides by Assyrian troops; Tadmor (Tigl. III pp. 243–244 fig. 11) places this orthostat in Annals Series A, Wall II. The scene, with its epigraph, appears in the upper register, above an inscription describing the events of the king's 8th and 9th palûs (text no. 28). This epigraph was edited as Misc. II, 1 in Tadmor, Tigl. III.
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The reading of the name is uncertain, i.e., whether the city is named after Upaš (mú-pa-áš), the ruler of the land Bīt-Kapsi (in the Zagros) who is mentioned in text no. 15 line 9 and text no. 28 line 7, as suggested by R. Barnett (Barnett and Falkner, Tigl. p. xix), or whether it is to be identified with Mount Upâ (ú-pa-a) in Urarṭu, a place mentioned in an account of Sargon's Eighth Campaign (Thureau-Dangin, TCL 3 p. 66 line 418). Note that there is no space in the small break after pa to restore another sign; cf. Tadmor, Tigl. III p. 210, where the epigraph is read as URU.ú-pa-[x].
A relief from Tiglath-pileser III's palace at Kalḫu has a one-word epigraph that is placed just above the wall of a city, which is depicted as situated on top of a mound and from which Assyrian soldiers take away prisoners and sheep; Tadmor (Tigl. III pp. 245–246 fig. 11) places this orthostat in Annals Series A, Wall III. The scene with this epigraph appears in the upper register above the unit of the Kalḫu Annals that describes the king's 11th palû (text nos. 18–19). The city shown on this relief is thought to be biblical Ashtaroth in Gilead, a city identified as Tell Astara in the northern Transjordan and which was probably part of the Assyrian province of Qarnini (Forrer, Provinz. p. 63; Oded, JNES 29 [1970] p. 179; Wäfler, Darstellungen pp. 118–124; and Radner, RLA 11/1–2 [2006] pp. 60–62 sub Qarnīna). The city's capture is not mentioned elsewhere in the extant corpus of Tiglath-pileser III's inscriptions, although the conquest of the nearby area, including Galʾadi (Gilead), is recorded in some non-annalistic inscriptions (text no. 42 line 6'; text no. 49 rev. 3; and text no. 50 rev. 3). That event is dated to 733. Tadmor edited this epigraph as Misc. II, 2 in Tigl. III.
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A relief from Tiglath-pileser III's palace at Kalḫu has a one-word epigraph that is placed just above the wall of the city, which is depicted as being attacked by Assyrians from the left (the right side of the slab is entirely broken off). The relief and epigraph are known only from an original drawing, as the slab was left at Nimrud. Tadmor (Tigl. III pp. 247–248 fig. 11) places this orthostat in Annals Series A, Wall IV. The scene, with its epigraph, appears in the upper register, above an inscription recording events of the 15th palû (text nos. 23–24). The city mentioned in the caption is apparently biblical Gezer, located in the Vale of Ayalon. This city should not be regarded as the city Baʾil-Gazara, which is mentioned in an epigraph of Sargon II from Dūr-Šarrukīn and whose location remains unknown (Bagg, Rép. Géogr. 7/1 pp. 41–42; cf. Tadmor, Tigl. III p. 210). The conquest of Gezer is not mentioned elsewhere in the extant corpus of Tiglath-pileser III's inscriptions. Nevertheless, like the city Ashtaroth, which is also known only from a caption (text no. 56), the city was probably captured in 733. This epigraph is referred to as Misc. II, 3 in Tadmor, Tigl. III.
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Hayim Tadmor & Shigeo Yamada
Hayim Tadmor & Shigeo Yamada, 'Miscellaneous Texts, Part 1', RINAP 1: Tiglath-pileser III and Shalmaneser V, The RINAP 1 sub-project of the RINAP Project, 2019 [http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap1/Tiglath-pileserIII:TextIntroductions/MiscellaneousTexts/Part1/]