PHUL

PHUL. - King of Assyria (2 Kings 15, 19 and 1 Chron. 5, 26), to be identified "with absolute certainty" (O. Hellmann) with the great king Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727), the true founder of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

The controversy, most heated from 1869 to 1887, can be said to have faded away. In fact, in 1887 the Neo-Babylonian Chronicle was published in London by Pinches; its col. I, 17-24 is parallel to the Neo-Babylonian King List, col. IV 5-8: in it Tiglath-Pileser (v.), which in the List corresponds to that of Pölu, assumed however only after the victory over Ukin-zer in 729 when he entered Babylon and at the New Year in 728 "took the hands of Bel." He made himself king of Babylon according to all the necessary rites, but to avoid the susceptibilities of the rival city he contented himself with a merely personal union and a distinction of names. Böhl, on the other hand, along with others, thinks that Pölu was his civil name, later changed to that of the great Tiglath-Pileser I when he usurped the throne of Assyria (745): this is not certain. With R. Thiele and others it can be said that 1 Chron. 5, 26 rather confirms the identification of Tiglath-Pileser with P., since the verb "deported" is in the singular and given the explicative force of the conjunction "waw": A. Vaccari translates in the same sense: "The God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul, king of Asshur, that is, of Tiglath-Pileser..."; others think it is a gloss.