The Elamites did not follow up this attack by occupying Ur for any length of time, but this famous event in ancient Mesopotamian history established the kingdom as one of the leading powers of the region. In the two centuries that followed, several Mesopotamian states tried to retake Susa from the Elamites. However, the kingdom of Elam survived and flourished, and its power spread beyond its borders.
In the early 2nd millennium BCE a king of Larsa, one of the leading city-states in Mesopotamia, was an Elamite, and a little later the king of Elam, Siwe-palar-huppak, is recorded as being the most powerful ruler in the region.
However, it was Hammurabi who turned the tables and, in alliance with other kings, broke the power of the Elamite king within Mesopotamia BCE. Within Elam, Susa retained its own Mesopotamian-style culture. Akkadian , the language dominant in Mesopotamia, continued to be widely used in Susa, and the inhabitants of the city continued to worship their Sumerian-style pantheon of gods.
Later, kings adopted purely Mesopotamian titles of rulership. The fact that royal names seem to become more Mesopotamian as time goes by also suggests that the royal family were being absorbed into the Mesopotamian culture of their new capital.
The kingdom seems to have been divided into two parts, with viceroys ruling from Susa over the city and plain and Anshan over the highlands. The viceroys were royal princes, and the heir to the throne would have filled one of these offices. Presumably the king moved between these two centers, quite possibly as was the case in later times residing in Susa during the winter and moving to the cooler highlands during the summer.
Another development within the royal family at this time was the apparently new practice of incest. Kings married their sisters and daughters, and queens and princesses their brothers and sons. The idea behind this was to ensured purity of royal blood and thus to bolster the legitimacy of the dynasty.
Princes born of such unions had a greater claim to the throne than others. This did not prevent one dynasty from being replaced by another, though whether by violence or because of failure of the royal line is not known.
In any event, the new dynasty soon seems to have adopted this habit. The centuries after BCE are marked by the resurgence of Elamite culture and the consequent submergence of the Mesopotamian-style culture of Susa. This is reflected in the much greater use of Elamite instead of Akkadian in official inscriptions, and the increasing importance of the Elamite pantheon of gods at the expense of the Mesopotamian one.
All this suggests that a new regime had come to power, with its power base rooted firmly in traditional Elamite highland society. The culmination of the expression of this new cultural identity was the building the major political-religious complex at Tchoga Zanbil, in honor of the Elamite gods. This may well have been intended to act as a new capital for the kingdom. In the event it was soon abandoned and Susa resumed its place, both as a seat of political power and as a center of culture.
It was embellished with new temples, and old ones were restored. Now, however, these were in honor of Elamite deities rather than the former Mesopotamian gods. So far as the royal family was concerned, the old practice of incest was still very much in vogue. One remarkable queen bore ten children from four different fathers — her own father, two of her brothers and a son whom she had had from her father , who all followed each other on the throne. This was a period of stability and prosperity for Elam, accompanied by substantial regional influence.
The Elamite army raided far and wide over Mesopotamia, and, in alliance with Assyria , carried out a devastating raid on Babylon, at that time under Kassite rule c. They thus brought the long-lasting Kassite dynasty to an end. The Elamite kingdom reached a peak of power and wealth at this time. It was the greatest power in the region for a generation or so before unspecified pressures led it to evacuate Babylon.
Then another king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar reigned BCE , was able to capture Susa and and take many of the trophies — including the statue of Marduk and the stele of Hammurabi — back to Babylon.
The king of Elam briefly took refuge at Anshan. Shortly after this Elam virtually disappears from history for several centuries. For the next two centuries little is know about the country; the name of none of the kings is recorded and the kingdom may well have fragmented into different principalities. At around this time the region saw the arrival of Iranian tribes from the north, which resulted in reducing the areas ruled by Elamites.
What can be said is that the Elamite kings were by no means a negligible force in the power politics of the time, which argues for some king of control over the highlands. It is at least clear from economic texts recovered from Susa at this time that relations between the people of that city and these principalities, including with Iranian chieftains, were good, and that there was an active trade between them. In the 8th and 7th centuries BCE the Elamites became involved again in Mesopotamian affairs, this time in a long-drawn out effort, in alliance with Babylon , to combat the growing power of the Assyrian empire.
At times they experienced some success, and the Assyrians certainly regarded them as a dangerous enemy. They killed its king in battle and brought an end to Elamite independence by dividing the kingdom in two and installing their own nominees as rulers.
The seats of their power were neither Susa nor Anshan, but two comparatively obscure towns. Trouble must have continued, because in BCE, king Ashurbanipal of Assyria mounted a huge raid, devastated the region around Susa and sacked the city itself. Sometime around this time an Iranian people called the Persians took over the area of Anshan, the old capital.
Under their chiefs of the Achaemenid clan, they established a principality there. It is clear, in fact, that the land of Elam was in effect fragmented among different small kingdoms, though still perhaps in some kind of vassal relationship with the king in Susa. Meanwhile the Achaemenid kings in Anshan became vassals of the Medes, an empire which had emerged in central Iran.
The land of Elam became politically divided; it would be reunited only in the mid-6th century, when a king of Anshan, called Cyrus , had rebelled against his overlord the king of the Medes and then, after a decade conquering far and wide in western and central Asia, he had conquered Babylon BCE. This event caused many other lands to come under Persian rule, including Syria , Judaea and Elam. The whole of Elam was now within the vast Achaemenid empire; it had lost its independence, never to be regained.
Achaemenid Elamite was deciphered in the second half of the 19 th century, and since the beginning of the 20 th century great progress has been made in the understanding of Middle Elamite. Nevertheless, knowledge of the language remains imperfect; and particularly in the scantily documented older strata much is still obscure.
The most ancient Elamite script is pictographic "proto-Elamite," employed at the beginning of the third millennium B. A linear script which developed from it in the second half of the third millennium B. Elam, located at the edge of the eastern border of the biblical world, is mentioned only a few times in the Bible.
According to Ezra —10, Elamites were deported to Northern Israel in the aftermath of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal's victory in the s, and thus constituted part of the peoples Jews later regarded as Samaritan non-Jews. In Isaiah Elam is seen as a place of exile, in Ezekiel as a typical foreign nation, and in Dan as a site of a vision. Elam also appears as a personal name among returnees from exile, but also as a clan of Benjamin in I Chronicles Stolper and E.
Carter, Elam. Surveys of Political History and Archaeology ; R. Zadok, The Elamite Onomasticon ; L. De Meyer, H. Gasche eds. Gragg, "Elamite," in: J. Sasson ed. Henrickson, "Elamites," in: E. Meyers ed. Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. All Rights Reserved. Download our mobile app for on-the-go access to the Jewish Virtual Library.
First Temple. Representation in the Majles. Jews in the Pahlavi Regime. Benjamin of Tudela. New York. Immigration to Israel. British Mandate. Jewish Agency. United States. Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Rabbi Bakshi Doron. Muslim and Arab states. Yom Kippur War. Iran Nuclear History. Joint Distribution Committee. Washington D. Yemenite Jews.
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