In seven known Assyrian clay tablet and Cuneiform inscriptions from different periods the Assyrians called the region connected with modern Palestine ‘Palashtu’, ‘Palastu’ or ‘Pilistu’, and called the people who lived in this region Palestinians: ‘pa-la-as-ta-a-a’, beginning with the King of Assyria Adad-Nirari III (from 811 BC to 783 BC) in the ‘Nimrud inscriptions’ in 800 BC through to Esarhaddon (who reigned 681 to 669 BC)

more than a century later (Room 2006: 285; also Smith, G. 1875: 115). The Nimrud inscriptions were discovered in 1854 by William Loftus in his excavations at Nimrud, a major ancient Assyrian city originally known as Kalhu. Located 30 kilometres south of the Iraqi city of Mosul, Nimrud was a strategic Assyrian city between approximately 1250 BC and 610 BC. They are among the best studied of the inscriptions of Adad-Nirari III, since they include a description of early Assyrian campaigns in Palestine and Syria. The text of the Saba’a Stele, the inscription of the reign of Asas-nirari III, was translated by Daniel Luckenbill (1881‒1927), an American Assyriologist and Professor at the University of Chicago, as:

In the fifth year [of my official rule] I sat down solemnly on my royal throne and called up the country [for war]. I ordered the numerous army of Assyria to march against Philistia [Pa-la-áš-tu].

I crossed the Euphrates at its flood. As to the numerous hostile kings who had rebelled in the time of my father Shamshi-Adad and had wi[thheld] their regular [tributes], or overwhelmed them [and] upon the command of Asur, Sin, Shamash, Adad (and) Ishtar, my trust [in] gods ... I received all the tributes … which they brought to Assyria.