SUSA | HOME OF THE ELAMITES
InfoSusa emerged as a cultural crossroads between the lowlands of Mesopotamia and the high plateau of Persia. Here, the skills of those living on the plains merged with the vigor of the mountain people to produce a brilliant new civilization.
The ancient Greeks knew Susa as a royal city of the Persian Empire. Before them, the writers of the Old Testament referred to it as the capital of a land called Elam. But Susa’s origins date even further back, to the shadows of prehistory, to an age before literate civilization began.
Today, Susa comprises several large earthen mounds located in the plain of Khuzestan in southwest Iran. Each mound is made up of layers of mud-brick ruins. Mud-brick is a delicate material, and early archaeological investigations did not have the techniques required to identify it. In 1897, a French geologist named Jacques de Morgan began an extensive excavation program in search of the origins of Elamite civilization. While valuable discoveries were made, tons of the precious layers of earth and rubble were removed and discarded. What remains today does not provide a complete picture of the city of Susa, but rather a series of intriguing glimpses into its gradual evolution.
CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION
Susa is located on a lowland plain that is irrigated by rivers flowing from the Iranian plateau. Although it is situated in Iran, it is considered part of Mesopotamia, the broad and fertile valley formed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The rise of urban civilization began in the 6th millennium BC in these rich, alluvial lowlands, as the inhabitants started to control river floods with irrigation schemes. This led to a dramatic increase in agricultural yields and the emergence of specialist crafts such as pottery. Trade expanded, and ambitious construction projects began, with the building of temples marking the beginnings of organized religion. More than 5,000 years ago, the people of Mesopotamia invented writing and went on to establish the first recorded kingdoms and empires.
By 4000 BC, a major urban revolution was in progress and the foundation of Susa dates back to this time. The city was to become the gateway to the Iranian plateau, a hub of trade routes linking the plains and mountains, for several thousand years.
For 300 years after its foundation, Susa developed as the center of a prosperous agricultural region. Funeral items from this early period, excavated from a vast cemetery containing more than 2,000 graves, include copper axes, suggesting an important traffic in the metal. The plain itself had no copper; it must have been brought from the Iranian plateau. The graves also suggest a tradition of fine pottery. The villages surrounding Susaproduced elegantly simple pots painted with stylized birds and animals.
During this period, the inhabitants of the city built an enormous brick terrace, 80m (262ft) square, perhaps designed to carry a great temple. The sheer size of the work implies a strong economy capable of diverting a large workforce from food production to construction. It also suggests the existence of a powerful central authority, though no evidence of a king or ruling hierarchy exists from this time. Stone seals of ownership have been found, so riches are likely to have accumulated in a few private hands. Slim clues like these suggest some kind of civic democracy, but tantalizingly, the evidence stops there. At an unidentified date, the terrace was destroyed.
The next stage in Susa‘s evolution began in about 3700 BC, when its distinctive local pottery was replaced by plain, mass-produced ware which was flooding the Middle East at that time. This sudden new influence can be attributed to the meteoric rise of Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia, where a booming economy began to inspire new forms of art. It was a prelude to more significant developments.
In about 3400 BC, an age of monumental building began at the Sumerian city of Uruk, on the banks of the Euphrates southwest of Susa. Local artists of the time often depicted a priest-king figure, obviously the head of a centralized administration.
Even more revolutionary, clay tablets bearing a form of written language had appeared. Symbols were used to list possessions or record business deals and land sales. Susa felt the influence of Sumer and developed in parallel. The city and its surrounding areas created a separate written language, also recorded on clay tablets. Similarly, a king-like figure begins to appear among the relics of Susa from this period. The figure is depicted on engraved cylindrical seals which were used as stamps of ownership, much like signet rings, in both Susa and Mesopotamia. Despite this suggestion of a monarchy, the economy does not appear to have been centralized. Private merchants and traders probably controlled most of the wealth.
Susa‘s trading community began to take to the roads, setting up distant merchant colonies; there is evidence that merchants from Susa even reached Egypt. But once again, an era of history ended for reasons that have not been identified. In about 3000 BC Susaand its colonies were abandoned.
A MEETING OF CULTURES
The abandonment is thought to have been brief. Excavations indicate that the city was soon reoccupied, and began a long period influenced at first by the hardy, inventive peoples of the Iranian plateau, then by the sophisticated Mesopotamians. Out of this fertile mixture of cultures, the civilization known to the Old Testament authors as Elam eventually emerged.
Initially, the newly occupied city looked to the upland peoples of the plateau, establishing commercial and diplomatic links with the peoples of the Fars region on the southern heights of present-day Iran. Among its new trading partners was a flourishing kingdom centered in the neighboring town of Anshan. Examples of early Elamite writing have been discovered at both Susa and Anshan – distinctive and lively representations of animals impressed on soft clay. The culture of the civilization that produced them, known as Proto-Elamite, survived for some 200 years until a new Mesopotamian upsurge caused Susa to renew its links with the cities to the west. Susa was drawn even more closely into the Mesopotamian fold in about 2300 BC, when the mighty Sargon of Akkad, a warrior king from the north-west, overran the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates and united its kingdoms into a single realm. As a result, the local spoken language was replaced by the Semitic language of the Akkadians.
THE BEGINNINGS OF A NEW KINGDOM
Though politically and culturally part of Mesopotamia, Susa maintained its established trading links. It remained the gateway to the Fars plateau, the hub of the well-trodden routes along which merchants carried precious stones and metals from the hills to the plain.
These routes were reaching ever deeper into Asia, and craftsmen on the Iranian plateau began to produce chlorite and later alabaster wares which were exported over vast distances. The most characteristic items were glazed seals made of steatite (soapstone) with cut-out patterns featuring a cross, an eagle, or a mythological figure. The seals reached Susa along the westerly routes; they have also been found in the steppes of southern Russia, and even as far east as the fringes of China.
Persia’s prosperity was strongly felt by the people of Susa. After their long subjection to Mesopotamia, political and cultural links with the Fars region were restored when the Elamites brought about the downfall of Mesopotamia’s ruling dynasty of Ur in 2004 BC. Susa and Anshan were reunited under one monarch, Kindattu – and the Elamite dynasty began. In about 1950 BC, the ruler’s title of ‘King of Susaand Anshan’ was dropped in favor of ‘Grand Regent’. The heir to the throne at that time was not the king’s son, but his younger brother – the son was the second in line. This sensible arrangement gave the son time to mature, and the in-fighting so often connected in royal houses with the accession of a young heir was thus avoided.
Under the new dynasty, a suburb grew up on the northern outskirts of Susa which has been carefully explored by archaeologists. Houses were grouped in blocks, separated by well-defined streets. Each house had a fireplace, used for cooking and for heating in winter. Most of the houses were fitted with latrines with a drainage course to carry away wastewater, and many of the inhabitants enjoyed the luxury of a bathroom with a terracotta bath. One house contained its own private chapel – a tiny sanctuary housing a huge altar, elaborately decorated with reliefs. Tombs were dug underneath the houses and fitted out with funeral furniture.
LIVING A NOBLE LIFE
The home comforts in the suburb of Susaall speak of modest prosperity, but it seems that the area was gradually adopted by a wealthier aristocracy. Funerary vaults replaced the simple tombs, and imposing buildings began to appear. In the 18th century BC, one of the suburb’s housing blocks was transformed into the residence of a high official known as Temti-wartash. Temti-wartash’s house was a palace. After passing through three vestibules, visitors entered a lavishly tiled courtyard. A palatial doorway led to a reception room with an arched roof supported by four rectangular columns, and the rest of the building was laid out around secondary courtyards.
The records of the master of the house have been found. They mention the royal grants awarded to him, name his farm workers, and list the huge quantities of grain needed to sow his fields. They also reveal his extensive business interests, listing creditors in distant towns. He even had a debtor as far away as Liyan (present-day Bushehr) on the Persian Gulf.
Later, other dignitaries set up residence in the quarter, notably Rabibi, a royal chamberlain. His house, fitted out like Temti-wartash’s, offers a delightful insight into daily life. There were classrooms where children learned the difficult cuneiform script of the period. Their exercises involved copying words, written by the teacher, onto large clay tablets, stored in holes in the ground to keep them cool and malleable.
THE ZIGGURAT OF CHOGHA ZANBIL
The ruined but majestic complex at Chogha Zanbil, built by Untash Napirisha, king of Susa, during the 13th century BC contains the remains of a huge temple dedicated to two gods: Inshushinak of Susa and Napirisha of Anshan. The union of the deities – one of the lowland plain, the other of the high plateau – reflected the twin influences at the heart of Elamite civilization.
The temple was built in two phases, almost as if its royal patron changed his mind after the first phase was complete. Workers began by constructing a huge courtyard,
100m (328ft) square, paved with unbaked brick. In the walls around it, vaulted chambers enclosed two sanctuaries and storage rooms for grain, jars, and building materials. Each of the walls had a central door.
After a time, the king decided to transform the building into a towering ziggurat – the tapering, terraced temple characteristic of all Mesopotamian civilizations. The brick-paved central courtyard was ripped up and the debris used to fill the vaulted rooms in its walls. Only one of the two sanctuaries was preserved. The original construction became the first floor of the new ziggurat. Three more stories were built up within the courtyard, each constructed of unbaked mud bricks, with a casing of hard, baked brick, and a final outer layer of crushed baked brick.
The facade glittered with glazed blue and green terracotta. An internal staircase lead to a temple on the top floor, some 44m (144ft) up, decorated with glass and ivory mosaics. Piles of bricks at the site indicate that further building was intended when, in 640 BC, the Assyrian king Assurbanipal attacked the complex, precipitating its fall into ruins.
Family vaults beneath the aristocratic houses have yielded numerous funerary items. To preserve the identity of the dead, portraits modeled from clay were painted and placed beside the corpse’s head. They seek to capture the likeness of the subject – unusual in the Middle East at a time when portraits usually conformed to conventional stereotypes. The most remarkable of them shows a man with a square-cut, fringed Elamite hairstyle. His doleful expression evokes the rough and ready peasant stock of a people living close to the mountains.
Women are shown smiling faintly and wearing their hair plaited in a diadem. Small terracotta figures of naked women, probably from the same period, were excavated from the streets. They were broken when found. Pregnant women probably wore them as a charm, throwing them away once they had delivered their child. Couples intertwined in their beds and mothers suckling babies were also represented – imagery designed to encourage bigger families and, indirectly, a larger city.
LINKING THE TRADITIONS
Susa and Anshan gradually drifted apart, but in the 13th century BC the new Anzanite dynasty restored the union. Its princes declared ‘expansionist’ aims.
For hundreds of years, only the Semitic Akkadian script had been used at Susa. But the new kings had their inscriptions drawn up in the language of Anshan, as well as in Akkadian. It was a clear statement of pride in the traditions of the plateau.
Little is known about the greatest king of the line, Untash-Napirisha (c.1275-1240 BC), except for his great building program. He also embellished Susa with masterpieces of metalwork. The most important surviving relic is a life-sized headless statue of his queen, Napirasu. Even without its head, this cast bronze figure weighs 1,750kg (almost 2 tons) – the largest metal statue ever found in the Middle East. But an even more impressive memorial to his reign is the temple and palace complex which he built for himself about 30km (18/2 miles) south-east of Susa. This testament to his majesty was called Al-Untash-Napirisha, now known as Chogha Zanbil, which lies on the edge of a plateau dominating the river Ab-e Dez.
The approach to the complex was by the river, then through the royal gate which also served as a law court (the custom in the Middle East). Within the first enclosure, several palaces were built for the use of the royal family. Below one palace were the tombs in which the king and his family would be buried. Banquets were held at each funeral, and the bodies were cremated. Not far from this funeral palace was a temple dedicated to Nusku, the Mesopotamian god of light and fire. The high altar of the temple was exposed to the sky – it was possibly a cremation site, and certainly a center of fire worship. Inside the walls of the first enclosure, a second enclosure housed the temples of various Elamite gods, and within, a third enclosure housed the major temples, including the sanctuary of the great gods Inshushinak, patron of Susa, and Napirisha, patron of the Anshan uplands.
The goddess wives of the two major deities also had temples dedicated to them. They were fully recognized alongside the gods, a tradition mirrored in the mortal world – Elamite women occupied powerful positions in both government and religion.
THE HUNT FOR TROPHIES
Not long after the construction of Al-Untash-Napirisha, the Elamite kingdom passed through a brief period of crisis. Then, in the 12th century BC, a new dynasty cast its eyes on distant horizons to restore the realm’s prestige.
To the west, the Babylonian dynasty of the Kassites had been ruling for almost 500 years. The new Elamite king, Shutruk Nahhunte, overthrew the dynasty and captured an immense haul of booty. He returned to Susa with statues, monuments, and a host of other trophies.
The new dynasty abandoned Al-Untash-Napirisha and set up a number of the captured monuments in Susaitself, where new temples were built in a distinctive style. The outer walls were made of glazed and molded bricks, which depicted royal couples and the guardian spirits of the buildings. Only fragments of the bricks have been found, but a curious bronze model showing a religious ceremony has survived intact. It depicts two figures taking part in a ritual, and an inscription reveals that it illustrates the ceremony of the Rising Sun – Sit Shamshi. The ritual takes place between two temples, probably those of Inshushinak and his wife at Susa. Offerings have been placed around the larger of the temples, beside some raised stones. Trees nearby indicate the existence of a sacred grove.
The piece suggests yet more unexpected affinities, in this case with the Semitic peoples of the Biblical lands far to the north-west: Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Though the temples are Elamite in style, the simple raised stones recall those worshipped as idols by the Canaanites. The wooded grove was revered by the Semites, who held all green trees sacred, and a miniature vase in the sculpture is similar to an item found in the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.
RELICS OF THE DEAD Underground tombs beside the temple of the god Inshushinak in Susa contain the cremated remains of the royal dead. Partially burnt furniture has been
found in these vaults, but the remains of precious gold and silver leaf bear witness to their original splendor. Statuettes of precious metals have also been discovered. Toys and games similar to modern solitaire had been buried there, too. Ancient relics from earlier eras have also been preserved: stamp seals and cylinder seals, which were already more than 2,000 years old; and exotic axe heads. These relics, imported from eastern Persia, seem to have been placed in the tombs to reinforce the monarchy’s claim to descent from the woman known as the Gracious Mother, the wife of the first Elamite king, Kindattu, who had reunited Anshan and Susa at the beginning of the second millennium BC. Safe in the vault, they survived the holocaust to come.
A LAND OF ASHES AND DUST
At the end of the 12th century BC the Babylonians recovered their supremacy and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Elamites. The ancient civilization crumbled as its enemies set it alight. The scale of the fire is almost unimaginable: a thick layer of ash covers the whole of the site of Susa a terrible reminder of the size of the conflagration which ended Elam’s most glorious period. Darkness fell over the conquered lands for some 400 years, and Elam never fully recovered. During those years, dramatic changes were to transform the Middle East completely.
In about 1000 BC, the plateau was engulfed by a wave of Aryan peoples from the Caucasus, from whom Iran derives its name. The Aryans founded the first Persian kingdom at Anshan. Meanwhile, a new power was rising in Mesopotamia – the empire of the Assyrians. Caught between these two power blocs, Elam’s fallen civilization was doomed.
At the end of the 8th century BC, an ambitious king of Susa called Shutter Nahunta revived some of the splendor of the metropolis, and for a few decades, its citizens enjoyed an uneasy peace through alliances first with Assyria, then with Persia. But it was not to last. In 646 BC, the Elamite capital was devastated once more, this time by the merciless ruler of Assyria, Assurbanipal (669-627 BC). Susa was looted, its royal tombs desecrated, and the images of its gods and kings were taken away.
But Susa refused to die. The Persians rebuilt the city in the 6th century BC, and it became the administrative capital of their empire. Later, in 331 BC, it fell to Alexander the Great.
It continued its role as a trade center until gradual decline set in during the late Middle Ages, reducing it into a cluster of deserted hillocks overlooking the barren plain of Khuzestan. But in one way the site preserved its history across thousands of years – it has retained its ancient name, in the form of Shush, from the time of the first written records until today.