hey
shortened his purely Assyrian name of Tukulti-abal-esharra into the
familiar sobriquet of Puru or Pulu, under which appellation the native
chroniclers later on inscribed him in the official list of kings: he did
not long survive his triumph, but died in the month of Tebeth, 728 B.C.,
after having reigned eighteen years over Assyria, and less than two
years over Babylon and Chaldaea.

The formulae employed by the scribes in recording historical events
vary so little from one reign to another, that it is, in most cases, a
difficult matter to make out, under the mask of uniformity by which they
are all concealed, the true character and disposition of each successive
sovereign. One thing, however, is certain--the monarch who now came
upon the scene after half a century of reverses, and in a brief space
restored to his armies the skill necessary to defeat such formidable
foes as the Armenians or the Syrians of Damascus, must have been an able
general and a born leader of men. Yet Nineveh had never suffered
long from a lack of capable generals, and there would be little to
distinguish Tiglath-pileser from any of his predecessors, if we could
place nothing more than a few successful campaigns to his credit.
His claim to a pre-eminent place among them rests on the fact that he
combined the talents of the soldier with the higher qualities of the
administrator, and organised his kingdom in a manner at once so simple
and so effective, that most of the Oriental powers down to the time of
the Grecian conquest were content to accept it as a model. As soon as
the ambition of the Assyrian kings began to extend beyond the region
confined between the Khabur and the Greater Zab, they found it necessary
to parcel out their territory into provinces under the authority of
prefects for the purpose of preserving order among the vanquished
peoples, and at the same time of protecting them from the attacks
of adjacent tribes; these representatives of the central power were
supported by garrisons, and were thus enabled to put down such minor
insurrections as broke out from time to time. Some of these
provinces were already in existence in the reigns of Shalmaneser or
Tiglath-pileser I.; after the reverses in the time of Assurirba, their
number decreased, but it grew rapidly again as Assur-nazir-pal and
Shalmaneser III. gradually extended the field of their operations and of
their victories. From this epoch onwards, the monuments mention over a