Page 425 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

both sides of the Euphrates trade route, the southern route which

crossed the continent by way of Babylon. Then they understood.
At last they were to try conclusions with Babylon. At last they
were going to show the world who was master in Mesopotamia.

All the same, a year went in preparations after their return,
in the fashioning of iron weapons and iron-tired chariots from the
stocks of metal acquired in the western campaigns. And in the

next year Tiglathpileser contented himself with establishing bases
on the lower Zab in northern Babylonia, using as pretext a Babylo­
nian border raid which had carried off some cattle and two

temple statues. But in 1107 b.c. he marched southward in force.
He was met by the main Babylonian army at Marrili in
upper Akkad, and the issue was never in doubt. The veteran

Assyrian army, a hundred thousand strong, was the greatest
fighting machine of the age. And the tough desert campaigners
broke the Babylonian line in a single charge. The rest could be

left to the engineers and the specialist storm troops. Dur-Kuri-
galzu, Opis, the two Sippars, and finally Babylon itself were taken
by assault. The rest of the campaign was organized plundering—

and the Assyrians reckoned themselves without equal as plunder­
ers.
Never had Assur been so full of portable wealth as the fol­

lowing winter. Slaves were a glut on the market. Silver and gold
flooded the imperial coffers and overflowed into the pockets of the
troops. Cattle and sheep could almost be had for the asking. The

wealth of the world streamed in on unending ass trains and
convoys of laden barges. Tiglathpileser bestrode the world, and
the following year, for the first time in ten years, there was no

campaign.
At about this time the majority of the men born around

1160 b.c., the veteran backbone of the army, retired from active
service. They were in their middle fifties, and their sons were
already in the ranks. They could afford now to take the grants of

land, at home or in the conquered territories, which were the pay­
ment for long service, and with the captured livestock, and the
captured slaves to herd them, they could and did settle down to

pass the rest of their days as gentlemen-farmers.
Tiglathpileser, too, had no more worlds to conquer. He had