The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State

Cambridge World Archaeology

by D.T. Potts

Few of the major peoples of the ancient Near East have been as little studied as the Elamites, a disparate collection of people living in what is today southwestern Iran, and yet few had such an impact on the course of history from c. 2600 BC to the first centuries AD. As the first synthesis of Elamite archaeology to appear in English in over fifteen years, this volume will serve as a major resource for all scholars, students and laypeople interested in the ancient Near East.

Genres: History, Iran, Ancient History, Nonfiction

524 pages, Paperback

First published July 28, 1995

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Daniel T. Potts is a NY University Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and History and a prolific author of articles and studies on Mesopotamia in the broad sense of the word, thus also the region called ‘Elam’ or ‘Anshan’. It’s what nowadays is the Southwest of Iran, with a mixed geography of lowlands and highlands (particularly the Zagros mountains and the western part of the Iranian plateau). Potts shows how the history of this region was very interconnected with that of Mesopotamia, at least beginning from the 4th millennium BCE. His focus is on archaeological finds and written material, all very meticulously looked at, often quite in detail. In a way this is a great synthesis, but the level of detail is such that this is not for the average reader. Given the date of publication, 1999, this could also be a bit outdated, but since the international isolation of Iran after 1979 very few new material has been excavated, so this could still be a good state of affairs. More in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Sense of History]

In-depth study of the history, and especially the archeology, of southwestern Iran, a region that in ancient times was called Elam, Anshan and sometimes also Susiana (after the most important city, Susa). It is an area that we mainly know from Mesopotamian sources, with which it was in constant interaction: “Alternately subject to Mesopotamian domination or busily subverting it as best they could, the Elamites are present in the archaeological and written record for thousands of years, reacting to foreign aggression, forging local alliances of which we have few details, cropping up in the written record of their western neighbors, saying little of themselves in their own inscriptions.”

Consequently, Elam remained relatively elusive throughout almost all of antiquity: it is an area with different geographies and identities, yet which remained relatively coherent even into the time of the Parthian empire (250 BCE – 220 CE). Perhaps the constant interaction with Mesopotamia is not strange to this, although Potts underlines that at least as important was the continuous contact with (semi)nomadic groups in the Iranian highlands. Naturally, Elam, and especially central Susa, came into full focus during the the Persian empire of the Achaemenids (the Persians were initially such a semi-nomadic group from the highlands). Potts suggests that this cosmopolitan empire emerged precisely from the interaction between Persians and Elamites (with their long institutionalized history). But as always, a warning is appropriate here (which Potts also continually repeats): the source material is so scarce that overly certain statements about any aspect of Elamite culture and history should be avoided. If only all experts of the Ancient Near East were as wise.

In this regard, there's only one thing that's a bit curious in this book, and that's the subtitle: "Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State". Of course, you can define 'state' in a very broad sense, but having read this book, I don't think Elam really corresponds to any kind of definition, or at least that we have far too little information on the politics of this region to be able to classify it as a real state. I don't understand how Potts could have used this term in such a sloppy way.

[Aroosha Dehghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

این کتاب پاتس همچنان یکی از بهترین هاست

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This exploration of what we know about ancient Elam is full of fascinating glimpses, some of which suggest a pre-patriarchal civilization. For example, the surviving clay or stone artworks portray a host of women. A mysterious female with the tail of a fish, holds serpents aloft in her hands. A two-horned figure wrestles with a serpent goddess. A seemingly important man and woman stand together. A woman seated on a chair is fanned by an attendant. An engraved seal, dated to ca. 3400 BCE, portrays women playing harps. The life-size bronze statue of a standing woman is labeled as Queen Napirasu (of ca. 1300 BCE). This statue bears an inscription, which may be the first written message from an Iranian woman:

"I [am] Napirasu, wife of Untash-Napirisha. He who would seize my statue, who would smash it, who would destroy its inscription, who would erase my name, may he be smitten by the curse of Napirisha, of [the goddess] Kiririsha, and of [the god] Inshushinak, that his name shall become extinct, that his offspring be barren, that the forces of Beltiya, the great goddess, shall sweep down upon him. This is Napirasu’s offering." (p. 201)

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

My reading project on ancient history is moving east into Iran. This book was written for professional archaeologists and archaeology students, which I’m not, rather than for general readers, so it was somewhat difficult; but what made it the most difficult and frustrating is simply the nature of Elam itself. From my readings on Mesopotamia, I had the impression that Elam was essentially Susa and its surrounding area, and this was in fact long the view of historians, but as Potts points out, the word “Elam” simply means “highlands”, and Susa is in the lowlands. Susa, although at times the “capital” of an Elamite polity (and at other times a dependency of one or another Mesopotamian state) was actually just the projection of the highland Elamite culture into the adjoining lowlands. The core of Elamite culture was in the ethnically heterogeneous tribes of the Zagros mountains and their foothills, from “Awan” and “Shimaski” to Anshan in the southeast.

Contrary to what one might expect from that, the book concentrates mostly on Susa. The reason in simple; it is the only part of Elam which has been sufficiently well excavated to allow for any sort of history; even then much of the story is derived from Mesopotamian and other external texts. Anshan has been only partially excavated, and the other settlements of the highlands have not been excavated at all and in fact in most cases have not even been identified. Given the present regime in Iran and its relations with the rest of the world, this is not likely to change in the near future.

Thus much of the book consists in the same history of relations between Susa and Mesopotamia which I had already read about in books about Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria, told from the perspective of Susa. This is not to say that that perspective is not interesting, or that the narrative of Susa doesn’t give a different viewpoint on the reason for events, which often seem arbitrary from the Mesopotamian side.

The book also differs from other books on the Near East by continuing through the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian and Sassanian periods, and in fact through most of the Middle Ages, although the farther it goes the less we know about the Elamites until they finally disappear entirely with the conquests of Tamerlane.

This was a very interesting book, but I would probably not recommend it to anyone not specializing in archaeology or Near Eastern history. I will be following up with four or five books on the Persians and other later peoples in the region.