Asshur-izir-pal’s first campaign was in north-western Kurdistan and in the adjoining parts of Armenia.  It does not present any very remarkable features, though he claims to have penetrated to a region “never approached by the kings his fathers.”  His enemies are the Numi or Elami (i.e., the mountaineers) and the Kirkhi, who seem to have left their name in the modern Kurkh.  Neither people appears to have been able to make much head against him:  no battle was fought:  the natives merely sought to defend their fortified places; but these were mostly taken and destroyed by the invader.  One chief, who was made prisoner, received very barbarous treatment; he was carried to Arbela, and there flayed and hung up upon the town wall.

The second expedition of Asshur-izir-pal, which took place in the same year as his first, was directed against the regions to the west and north-west of Assyria.  Traversing the country of Qummukh, and receiving its tribute, as well as that of Serki and Sidikan (Arban), he advanced against the Laki, who seem to have been at this time the chief people of Central Mesopotamia, extending from the vicinity of Hatra as far as, or even beyond, the middle Euphrates.  Here the people of a city called Assura had rebelled, murdered their governor, and called in a foreigner to rule over them.  Asshur-izir-pal marched hastily against the rebels, who submitted at his approach, delivering up to his mercy both their city and their new king.  The latter he bound with fetters and carried with him to Nineveh; the former he treated with almost unexampled severity.  Having first plundered the whole place, he gave up the houses of the chief men to his own officers, established an Assyrian governor in the palace, and then, selecting from the inhabitants the most guilty, he crucified some, burnt others, and punished the remainder by cutting off their ears or their noses.  We can feel no surprise when we are informed that, while he was thus “arranging” these matters, the remaining kings of the Laki submissively sent in their tribute to the conqueror, paying it with apparent cheerfulness, though it was “a heavy and much increased burden.”

In his third expedition, which was in his second year, Asshur-izir-pal turned his arms to the north, and marched towards the Upper Tigris, where he forced the kings of the Nairi, who had, it appears, regained their independence, to give in their submission, and appointed them an annual tribute in gold, silver, horses, cattle, and other commodities.  It was in the course of this expedition that, having ascended to the sources of the Tsupnat river, or Eastern Tigris, Asshur-izir-pal set up his memorial side by side with monuments previously erected on the same site by Tiglath-Pileser and by the first or second Tiglathi-Nin.