The beginning of Tiglath-Pileser's I reign had heavy involvement in military campaigns, as suggested from translated texts from the Middle Assyrian period.

[7] Alongside this view of himself, he emphasized the brutality of his takeover of numerous lands, and was the first Assyrian king to claim hostages, occasionally children, as a political instrument against conquered peoples.

[6] In a subsequent campaign, the Assyrian forces penetrated into the mountains south of Lake Van and then turned westward to receive the submission of Malatia.

In his fifth year, Tiglath-Pileser attacked Comana in Cappadocia, and placed a record of his victories engraved on copper plates in a fortress he built to secure his Cilician conquests.

[9] The control of the high road to the Mediterranean was secured by the possession of the Hittite town of Pitru at the junction between the Euphrates and Sajur; thence he proceeded to Gubal (Byblos), Sidon, and finally to Arvad where he embarked onto a ship to sail the Mediterranean, on which he killed a nahiru or "sea-horse" (which A. Leo Oppenheim translates as a narwhal) in the sea.

A.0.87.i (or RIMA 2) was inscribed on a multiple 8-sided prisms and included 6 military campaigns that Marco De Odorico affirms as easily identifiable given that "the subdivision of paragraphs by horizontal lines... as well as the introduction begin with 'in my succession year'".

[5] Considering that much of Tiglath-Pileser I's reign involved military campaigns, it is unsurprising that most of his literary texts would include such information as "Altogether I conquered 42 lands and their rulers from the other side of the Lower Zab in distant mountainous regions to the other side of the Euphrates, people of Hatti, and the Upper Sea in the west – from my accession year to my fifth regnal year.