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CHAPTER XXIII - PERSIA, c. 2400–1800 B.C.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Walther Hinz
Edited by
I. E. S. Edwards ,
C. J. Gadd  and
N. G. L. Hammond
Walther Hinz
Affiliation:
University of Gottingen
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Summary

THE ELAMITE KINGS OF AWAN

The history of Persia before the migration of the Medes and the Persians in about 1000 b.c. is almost entirely limited to the history of Elam. This is because Elam, south-west Iran, alone has left behind any documents worthy of mention from the pre-Persian era. Only very few remnants of Akkadian inscriptions on rock reliefs survive from the non-Elamite part of south-west Iran. From the remainder of Persia there is silence until the coming of Zoroaster, the great prophet of eastern Iran (probable dates, 630–533 b.c.).

Compared with the long duration of the Elamite Kingdom, the actual number of documents surviving is indeed pitifully few. They are partly in Akkadian, and partly in Elamite, and to an overwhelming degree come from the age-old capital of Elam, Susa, which has been under excavation by a French archaeological mission ever since 1897. A further difficulty is that Elamite, being related to no other known language, is still insufficiently understood.

The ethnological definition of the Elamites also causes great difficulties. The most reasonable assumption is that which holds the Elamites to be the Proto-Lurs, whose language became Iranian only in the Middle Ages. The Elamites wrote the name of their country in cuneiform as Haltamti or Hatamti, which they probably pronounced altamt. This word may mean ‘God's Land’, if it is composed of hal ‘land’ and tamt [tämpt] ‘(gracious) Lord’. For the Sumerian and Akkadian neighbours, Elam (written with the Sumerian sign (NIM) was connected with the idea of ‘highland’–and rightly so, because although its frontiers fluctuated with the course of centuries, they always included not only the low plain of Susiana (with the river network of the Karkhah, the Āb-i Diz, and the Kārūn), but also the mountains and plateaux to the north and east of Susiana.

Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge Ancient History
, pp. 644 - 680
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1971

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