Babylonian and Assyrian Literature eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 377 pages of information about Babylonian and Assyrian Literature.

Babylonian and Assyrian Literature eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 377 pages of information about Babylonian and Assyrian Literature.

[Footnote 1:  Hittites.]

XXXII

I have omitted many hunting expeditions which were not connected with my warlike achievements.  In pursuing after the game I traversed the easy tracts in my chariots, and the difficult tracts on foot.  I demolished the wild animals throughout my territories.[1]

[Footnote 1:  A very difficult paragraph.]

XXXIII

Tiglath-Pileser, the illustrious warrior, he who holds the sceptre of Lashanan; he who has extirpated all wild animals.

XXXIV

The gods Hercules and Nergal gave their valiant servants and their arrows as a glory to support my empire.  Under the auspices of Hercules, my guardian deity, four wild bulls, strong and fierce, in the desert, in the country of Mitan, and in the city Arazik, belonging to the country of the Khatte,[1] with my long arrows tipped with iron, and with heavy blows I took their lives.  Their skins and their horns I brought to my city of Ashur.

[Footnote 1:  Hittites.]

XXXV

Ten large wild buffaloes in the country of Kharran, and the plains of the river Khabur, I slew.  Four buffaloes I took alive; their skins and their horns, with the live buffaloes, I brought to my city of Ashur.

XXXVI

Under the auspices of my guardian deity Hercules, two soss of lions fell before me.  In the course of my progress on foot I slew them, and 800 lions in my chariots in my exploratory journeys I laid low.  All the beasts of the field and the flying birds of heaven I made the victims of my shafts.[1]

[Footnote 1:  A very doubtful sentence.]

XXXVII

From all the enemies of Ashur, the whole of them, I exacted labor.  I made, and finished the repairs of, the temple of the goddess Astarte, my lady, and of the temple of Martu, and of Bel, and Il, and of the sacred buildings and shrines of the gods belonging to my city of Ashur.  I purified their shrines, and set up inside the images of the great gods, my Lords.  The royal palaces of all the great fortified cities throughout my dominions, which from the olden time our kings had neglected through long years, had become ruined.  I repaired and finished them.  The castles of my country, I filled up their breaches.  I founded many new buildings throughout Assyria, and I opened out irrigation for corn in excess of what my fathers had done.  I carried off the droves of the horses, cattle, and asses that I obtained, in the service of my Lord Ashur, from the subjugated countries which I rendered tributary, and the droves of the wild goats and ibexes, the wild sheep and the wild cattle which Ashur and Hercules, my guardian gods, incited me to chase in the depths of the forests, having taken them I drove them off, and I led away their young ones like the tame young goats.  These little wild animals, the delight of their parents’ hearts, in the fulness of my own heart, together with my own victims, I sacrificed to my Lord Ashur.

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Babylonian and Assyrian Literature from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.