elam jay - memorena
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Elam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Elam was centered in the far west and the southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province, as well as a small part of southern Iraq. The name is a transcription from Biblical Hebrew, corresponding to the Sumerian elam(a), the Akkadian elamtu, and the Elamite hatamti. Elamite states were among the leading political forces of the ancient near east.
Situated just to the east of Mesopotamia, Elam was part of the early urbanization during the Chalcolithic period (Copper Age). The emergence of written records from around 3000 BC also parallels Mesopotamian history. In the Old Elamite period (Middle Bronze Age), Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a crucial role in the Gutian Empire, especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it, when the Elamite language remained among those in official use.
The Elamite language has no established affinities with any other, and seems to be a language isolate such as Sumerian. Some researchers have posited the existence of a larger group known as Elamo-Dravidian. Linguists such as Václav Blažek and Georgiy Starostin have criticized the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis and concluded that the Elamite language was related to Afroasiatic languages. These theories have been heavily criticized.
The high country of Elam was increasingly identified by its low-lying later capital, Susa. Geographers after Ptolemy called it Susiana. The Elamite civilization was primarily centered in the province of what is modern-day Khuzestān and extended into the later province of Fars in prehistoric times. The modern provincial name Khuzestān is derived from Persian: Old Persian Hūjiya "Elam" (
In a tablet unearthed in 1854 by Henry Austin Layard, Ashurbanipal boasts of the destruction he had wrought:
Elamite is unrelated to the neighboring Semitic, Sumerian, and Indo-European languages. It was written in a cuneiform adapted from Akkadian script, although the very earliest documents were written in the quite different "Linear Elamite" script. In 2006, two even older inscriptions in a similar script were discovered at Jiroft to the east, leading archaeologists to speculate that Linear Elamite had spread from there to Susa. It seems to have developed from an even earlier writing known as "proto-Elamite", but scholars are not unanimous on whether or not this script was used to write Elamite or another language, and it has not yet been deciphered.
David McAlpine believes Elamite may be related to the living Dravidian languages (of southern India, and Brahui in Pakistan). The hypothesized family of Elamo-Dravidian languages may further prove to be connected with the Indus Valley Civilization somewhat to the East, possibly corresponding to Meluhha in Sumerian records. Such links are at best conjectural, and Harappan pictographs have also yet to be deciphered.
Several stages of the language are attested; the earliest date back to the third millennium BC, the latest to the Achaemenid Empire.
The Elamite language may have survived as late as the early Islamic period. Ibn al-Nadim among other Islamic medieval historians, for instance, wrote that "The Iranian languages are Fahlavi (Pahlavi), Dari, Khuzi, Persian and Suryani", and Ibn Moqaffa noted that Khuzi was the unofficial language of the royalty of Persia, "Khuz" being the corrupted name for Elam.
The rise of the Achaemenids in the 6th century BC brought an end to the existence of Elam as an independent political power "but not as a cultural entity" (Encyclopædia Iranica, Columbia University). Indigenous Elamite traditions, such as the use of the title "king of Anshan" by Cyrus the Great; the "Elamite robe" worn by Cambyses I of Anshan and seen on the famous winged genii at Pasargadae; some glyptic styles; the use of Elamite as the first of three official languages of the empire used in thousands of administrative texts found at Darius’ city of Persepolis; the continued worship of Elamite deities; and the persistence of Elamite religious personnel and cults supported by the crown, formed an essential part of the newly emerging Achaemenid culture in Persian Iran. The Elamites thus became the conduit by which achievements of the Mesopotamian civilizations were introduced to the tribes of the Iranian plateau.
Conversely, Elamites had "absorbed Iranian influences in both structure and vocabulary" by 500 BC, suggesting a form of cultural continuity or fusion connecting the Elamite and the Persian periods.
The name of "Elam" survived into the Hellenistic period and beyond. In its Greek form, Elymais, it emerges as designating a semi-independent state under Parthian suzerainty during the 2nd century BC to the early 3rd century AD. In Acts 2:8-9 in the New Testament, the language of the Elamitēs is one of the languages heard at the Pentecost. From 410 onwards Elam (Beth Huzaye) was the senior metropolitan province of the Church of the East, surviving into the 14th century.
Category:History of Iran Category:3rd-millennium BC establishments Category:Civilizations Category:Hebrew Bible nations Category:Provinces of the Sassanid Empire Category:Matriarchy
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