Tukultī-Ninurta II (890-884 BC), son of Adad-nārārī II (911-891 BC), father of Ashurnaṣirpal II [/riao/ria4/index.html] (883-859 BC), and grandfather of Shalmaneser III [/riao/ria5/shalmaneseriii/index.html] (858-824 BC), was the hundredth ruler of Ashur, according to the Assyrian King List [/riao/kinglists/assyriankinglist/assyriankinglist/index.html#Ashurdan], and eponym [http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=assyrian_eponyms_limmu] of the year 889 [/saao/saas2/Q004243.22/].
Tukultī-Ninurta II reigned for seven years, continuing the imperial grand strategy of his predecessors by leading various military campaigns, although without adding much territory to Assyria. The campaigns from his second to sixth regnal years are described in text no. 5, including a "show of strength" expedition in the Jezirah (ll. 41-127 [/riao/ria3/Q006035.46/]). In these records, a new motif in the narrative composition of the inscription is the inclusion of the cause of the campaign, provoked by a treacherous act of the enemy.
Tukultī-Ninurta II's building projects were carried out in the two
cities where the king lived: at Ashur, where he worked on the wall of
Baltil (no. 2 [/riao/ria3/Q006032.25/]), the
palace terrace (nos. 3 [/riao/ria3/Q006033.41/]
and 5 [/riao/ria3/Q006035.145/]), the Enpi temple
(nos. 7
and 14 [/riao/ria3/Q006044/]), and possibly the
Anu-Adad temple (no. 15),
and at Nineveh (nos. 12-13 and 17), for which no detailed descriptions of the works are available. Furthermore, he led a series of building works in centres outside the Assyrian heartland: Nēmed-Tukultī-Ninurta (no. 6 [/riao/ria3/Q006036/]), Kaḫat (no. 9 [/riao/ria3/Q006039/]), and possibly Terqa (no. 1004).
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Nathan Morello
Nathan Morello, 'Tukultī-Ninurta II', RIA 3: Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser I to Tukultī-Ninurta II, The RIA Project, 2023 [http://oracc.org/tukultininurtaii/]