Ashur-dan I, one of the longest-reigning Kings…

Nabu-kudurri-usur (Nebuchadnezzar I) of Babylon’s Dynasty IV, ruling from Isin, restores stability in Mesopotamia, facilitating the recovery of trade.

Assyrian power has declined since the death of Tukulti-Ninurta I around 1208 BCE, but is to be restored briefly in the eleventh century BCE by Tiglath-pileser I, the son of Ashur-resh-ishi I, who ascends the Assyrian throne in 1115 BCE at a time when a people known as the Mushki, or Mushku, are thrusting into Asia Minor (now Turkey).

Their invasion constitutes a serious threat to Middle Eastern civilization because Asia Minor is the principal source of iron, which was now coming into general use.

Tiglath-Pileser, destined to be one of the greatest of Assyrian conquerors, conducts his first campaign against the Mushki who had occupied certain Assyrian districts on the Upper Euphrates.

Known from Assyrian sources, they do not appear in Hittite records.

Several authors have connected them with the Moschoi of Greek sources and the Georgian tribe of the Meskhi.

Two different groups are called Muški in the Assyrian sources (Diakonoff 1984:115), one from the twelfth to ninth centuries, located near the confluence of the Arsanias and the Euphrates ("Eastern Mushki"), and the other in the eighth to seventh centuries, located in Cilicia ("Western Mushki").

Assyrian sources identify the Western Mushki with the Phrygians, while Greek sources clearly distinguish between Phrygians and Moschoi.

Originally, these "Eastern Mushki" may have occupied a territory in the area of Urartu.

They appear to have moved into Hatti in the twelfth century, completing the downfall of the collapsing Hittite state, establishing themselves in a post-Hittite kingdom in Cappadocia.

Allied with the Hurrians and Kaskas, they had invaded the Assyrian provinces of Alzi and Puruhuzzi in about 1160, but they are pushed back and defeated, along with the Kaskas, by Tiglath-Pileser in 1115 BCE.

The Kaska now disappear from all historical records.

When the Black Sea littoral returns to recorded history, it would be populated by the Armenians.

In a subsequent campaign, the Assyrian forces penetrate into the mountains south of Lake Van and then turn westward to receive the submission of Malatia.

Tiglath-Pileser overruns Kummukh (Commagene) and eastern Cappadocia in the fifth year of his reign, attacking Comana in Cappadocia and …

…driving the Hittites from the Assyrian province of Subarti northeast of Malatia, advancing as far as Milid.

He places a record of his victories engraved on copper plates in a fortress he builds to secure his Cilician conquests.

The Aramaeans of north Syria are the next to be attacked by Tiglath-Pileser, and he thrice makes his way as far as the sources of the Tigris.

Many great changes had begun to occur in the Egyptian Empire during the reign of Ramesses III because of the invasion of Syria by peoples from Asia Minor and Europe.

His successors lose their hold over Canaan; the Twenty-first Dynasty no longer intervenes in the affairs of Syria.

In The Story of Wen-Amon, a tale of an Egyptian religious functionary sent to Byblos to secure cedar around 1100, the episode of the functionary's inhospitable reception shows the extent of the decline of Egypt's authority in Phoenicia at this time.

Tiglath-Pileser secures command of the high road to the Mediterranean by the possession of the Hittite town of Pethor at the Jordan River; thence he proceeds to …

…the Phoenician cities of Gubal (Byblos), …

…Sidon, and finally to …