Shalmaneser's Campaign to Urarṭu in 856 B.C. and the Historical Geography of Eastern Anatolia according to the Assyrian Sources

The highlands of Eastern Anatolia cannot have seemed to be a particularly attractive or accessible area to the Assyrians. The E. Taurus—the range of mountains separating the plain of Upper Mesopotamia from the highlands to the north—was rarely breached by the Assyrians: in the Middle-Assyrian period, Tiglath-pileser I claims that he went to the Nairi lands (then around Lake Van) three times; Shalmaneser III penetrated E. Anatolia through the E. Taurus in his 3rd, 7th and 15thpalûs, and from N.W. Iran in his accession year and 30th and 31stpalûs. Thereafter, the region lay in the hands of the Urartians and, except for the raid on Ṭurušpa carried out by Tiglath-pileser III pursuing the remnants of the army of Sarduri II after the defeat of the anti-Assyrian coalition in Kummuh in 743, was never penetrated by the Assyrian army again.Shalmaneser's campaign of 856 began with the completion of the conquest of the Aramaean state of Bit-Adini, lying on the Euphrates to the south of Carchemish. After leaving Bit-Adini, Shalmaneser made his way to Bit-Zamani, the Diyarbakır area, and thence began his long campaign through Eastern Anatolia to Western Iran and back to Assyria.