Elamite Kingdom

Elam was one of the most ancient and enduring civilisations of the Near East, centred in what is now southwestern Iran, with its principal cities at Susa in the lowland plain and Anshan in the highlands.

Spanning from around 2700 BCE to its absorption by the Persians in the sixth century BCE, Elamite history is conventionally divided into the Old Elamite, Middle Elamite, and Neo-Elamite periods. Rather than a single continuous empire, Elam was a shifting confederation of lowland and highland polities that periodically unified into powerful states. From its earliest phases Elam interacted closely, and often violently, with the Mesopotamian powers of Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon, alternately raiding, trading, and intermarrying with them. The Elamites developed their own writing systems, including Proto-Elamite and later Elamite cuneiform, and a distinctive religion and art. The Middle Elamite period marked a cultural and political high point: kings such as Untash-Napirisha built the great ziggurat complex at Chogha Zanbil, and Shutruk-Nahhunte raided Babylonia and carried off famous monuments, including the stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi and the victory stele of Naram-Sin, back to Susa. Elam's power waned under the pressure of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, whose king Ashurbanipal devastated Susa in the seventh century BCE. The Neo-Elamite remnant was eventually incorporated into the rising Median and then Achaemenid Persian states; Susa became one of the great administrative capitals of the Achaemenid Empire, and the Elamite language remained in official use. Elamite civilisation profoundly shaped the cultural foundations of later Persian empires.

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