t an Oriental sovereign had
penetrated so far west; and his contemporaries must have been obliged
to look back to the almost fabulous ages of Sargon of Agade or of
Khammurabi, to find in the long lists of the dynasties of the Euphrates
any record of a sovereign who had planted his standards on the shores of
the Sea of the Setting Sun.*

*This is the name given by the Assyrians to the
Mediterranean.

Tiglath-pileser embarked on its waters, made a cruise into the open, and
killed a porpoise, but we have no record of any battles fought, nor do
we know how he was received by the Phoenician towns. He pushed on, it is
thought, as far as the Nahr el-Kelb, and the sight of the hieroglyphic
inscriptions which Ramses had caused to be cut there three centuries
previously aroused his emulation. Assyrian conquerors rarely quitted
the scene of their exploits without leaving behind them some permanent
memorial of their presence. A sculptor having hastily smoothed the
surface of a rock, cut out on it a figure of the king, to which was
usually added a commemorative inscription. In front of this stele was
erected an altar, upon which sacrifices were made, and if the monument
was placed near a stream or the seashore, the soldiers were accustomed
to cast portions of the victims into the water in order to propitiate
the river-deities.

[Illustration: 231.jpg PORTIONS OF THE SACRIFICIAL VICTIMS THROWN INTO
THE WATER]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the
bronze gates of Balawat.

One of the half-effaced Assyrian stelae adjoining those of the Egyptian
conqueror is attributed to Tiglath-pileser.*

*Boscawen thinks that we may attribute to Tiglath-pileser I.
the oldest of the Assyrian stelae at Nahr el-Kelb; no
positive information has as yet confirmed this hypothesis,
which is in other respects very probable.

It was on his return, perhaps, from this campaign that he planted
colonies at Pitru on the right, and at Mutkinu on the left bank of the
Euphrates, in order to maintain a watch over Carchemish, and the more
important fords connecting Mesopotamia with the plains of the Aprie and
the Orontes.*

* The existence of these colonies is known only from an
inscription of Shalmaneser II.

The news of Tiglath-pileser's expedition was not long in reaching the
Delta, and the Egyptian monarch then reigning at Tanis was thus made
acquainted with the fact that there had