Tag: Elam

  • Iranica Antiqua

    Iranica Antiqua

    Volume 59 of Iranica Antiqua has been published:

    • 1 – 24 – Against Cuneiform: The Dawn of Writing in Iran
      DANESHMAND, Parsa
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    • 25 – 33 – Cylinder Seals in the National Museum of Iran
      BAGHBIDI, Bahar Rezai, MIRGHADERI, Mohammad Amin, D’ORAZIO, Claudia
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    • 35 – 62 – Petrographic and XRF Analysis of the Ceramics of the Achaemenid Period in the Ramhormoz Plain, Southwestern Iran
      AFSHARI, Leila, AKARSU, Rabia
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    • 63 – 82 – In Search of the Plains of Gaugamela
      SZYPUŁA, Bartłomiej, GŁOGOWSKI, Piotr, MARCIAK, Michał
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    • 83 – 108 – The Statue of the ‘Prince’ of Shami: Parthian Nobleman, Local Ruler or Arsacid King of Kings?
      SINISI, Fabrizio
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    • 109 – 128 – Why the Title rāmšahr for Yazdgerd I?
      JALILIAN, Shahram
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    • 129 – 151 – Between Dome and Eyvān: Building Techniques, Function, and Symbolism of the Kushk-e Ardashir in Bozpar (Bushehr, Iran)
      LABISI, Guiseppe
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    • 153 – 193 – The Dynamics of Anthropogenic Landscape Evolution in the Bozpar Valley (South Iran). A Case Study for Small-Scale Hydraulic Engineering in Antiquity
      RASHIDIAN, Elnaz
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    • 195 – 218 – Passing through the Northwestern Heights of the Alvand Mountains: Restoring the Caravan Routes between Asadabad and Hamadan in Different Historical Periods
      REZAEI, Iraj
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  • Elam and Its Neighbors

    Elam and Its Neighbors

    Prechtel, Doris & Alexander Pruß (eds.). 2025. Elam und seine Nachbarn. 10. Internationales Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, 8.–10. April 2019, Mainz. Wiesbaden: Harrassozitz.

    Die antike Kulturregion Elam im Südwesten des heutigen Iran war über Jahrtausende hinweg eines der bedeutendsten Zentren politischer Macht und kultureller Entwicklung in Vorderasien. Neben dem benachbarten Mesopotamien spielte es im späten 4. Jahrtausend v. Chr. eine bedeutende Rolle bei der Entstehung und Entwicklung urbaner Gesellschaftsformen im Vorderen Orient. Im späten 3. und dem 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr. war der elamische Staat zeitweise so mächtig, dass seine Herrscher mehrfach entscheidend in die Geschichte Babyloniens eingreifen konnten. Auch nach der Zerschlagung des elamischen Reiches im 7. Jahrhundert v. Chr. hat Elam bis in die Zeit des Achämenidenreiches (550–330 v. Chr.) seinen eigenständigen kulturellen Charakter bewahren können. Totz seiner offenkundigen Bedeutung sind Elam und seine Kultur lange Zeit nur von wenigen Spezialisten erforscht worden.

    Mit dieser zentralen Kulturregion des Alten Orients und den Beziehungen zu ihren Nachbarn hat sich das 10. Internationale Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft befasst, dessen Beiträge in diesem Band versammelt sind. Der zeitliche Rahmen reicht dabei von der Mitte des 3. Jahrtausends v. Chr. bis in die Achämenidenzeit. Die besondere Betonung der Beziehungen Elams zu seinen Nachbarn soll verdeutlichen, dass Elam nicht nur ein östliches „Anhängsel“ Mesopotamiens war, sondern ein wichtiger Knotenpunkt in einem bis nach Zentralasien, das iranische Hochland und die Golfregion reichenden Netzwerk.

    See the table of contents here.

  • The Tomb of Two Priestesses?

    Wicks, Yasmina & Gian Pietro Basello. 2024. The tomb of two priestesses? The late Neo-Elamite Jubaji Tomb in a religious-royal context. Asia Anteriore Antica. Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures 6: 107-143.

    This article revisits one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in southwest Iran in recent decades, a rich early-mid 6th century BCE tomb of two women, unearthed near the village of Jubaji on the Ramhormoz plain in 2007. Based on the sumptuous grave assemblages and the inclusion of a gold ceremonial ‘ring’ inscribed with the name of a late Neo-Elamite king, Šutur-Nahunte son of Intata, the tomb’s excavator, Arman Shishegar, reasonably interpreted the women – one aged under 17 years, the other 30-35 years – as princesses. Here it is argued that the women may have been important figures in a religious institution based on a combination of the context of the tomb, which seems to have been in an association with a monumental structure, and certain elements of the assemblages. While none of the individual items is significant in isolation, when put together they are highly suggestive of a cultic environment. These include several semiprecious stone beads, including two inscribed eye-stones, that were already very ancient when deposited, special ritual paraphernalia, the bronze coffins that held the women’s remains, the inscribed gold ‘ring’ naming Šutur-Nahunte son of Intata, and an inscribed gold object (perhaps a bracelet) of a cult officiant. This is not to say that the roles of princess and priestess were by any means mutually exclusive, but it is the religious aspect that has yet to be investigated. A reassessment here of the significance of the inscribed objects from the Jubaji tomb in a religious context is taken as an occasion to publish new transliterations, translations, and analyses of the inscriptions by Gian Pietro Basello.

  • Elite Mortuary Culture at Susa

    Wicks, Yasmina. 2024. Elite Mortuary Culture at Susa: An Analysis of Early Middle Bronze Age Clay Coffin Burials. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

    A crucial task of archaeological research today is to comprehend and critically interpret the rich legacy data from early excavations of ancient Near Eastern settlement sites. Yasmina Wicks targets the problematic and rarely consulted early 20th century records of excavations by French delegations at the UNESCO World Heritage-listed site of Susa in today’s southwest Iran. By scrutinizing published and unpublished documentation, she generates a new dataset of over 250 never-before-studied clay coffin burials to reveal a mortuary practice that began to flourish in the city at around 2000 BCE. These coffins were not used as upright-set containers but were instead overturned to provide a covering for the body, a distinctive method attested also at contemporary settlements in neighboring southern Mesopotamia.

    The study begins with a discussion of the possibilities and constraints of using the legacy data, and then proceeds to an analysis of the typology, chronology, site distribution, and frequency of the coffins. Next it examines their rich and varied grave good assemblages, and the mortuary rites and demographic profile associated with their use. Finally, it reflects on the broader significance of the overturned clay coffin practice, concluding that it can be seen as a key signature of Susa’s bicultural society, offering a new perspective on Elamite and Mesopotamian cultural connectivity when the city left the political embrace of Mesopotamia’s Ur III dynasts at the end of the Early Bronze Age and became the lowland seat of the Elamite rulers from the Zagros Mountains. The mortuary behavior associated with the coffins, initially characterized by an unprecedented consumption of wealth, emerges as a response to new socio-political and socio-economic conditions both locally and across the Near East in the pivotal early years of the Middle Bronze Age.

  • The Correspondence of Assurbanipal, Part II

    Frame, Grant & Simo Parpola. 2023. The Correspondence of Assurbanipal, Part II Letters from Southern Babylonia (State Archives of Assyria 22). Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project.

    The present volume completes the critical edition of the political correspondence of Assurbanipal, the first part of which was published in SAA 21. The 163 letters edited here were sent from southern Mesopotamia and Elam, mostly by governors or other high-ranking local administrators and military commanders; almost all are addressed to the Assyrian king, although a few nonroyal letters are also included. As in SAA 21, the bulk of the correspondence dates from the civil war between Assurbanipal and Šamaš-šumu-ukin and provides dramatic eyewitness evidence of this turbulent time.

  • Neo-Elamite Grain Procurement

    Gorris, Elynn. 2023. “Don’t Let the Boats Pass!” Neo-Elamite Grain Procurement in Times of Famine and Drought. Iranian Studies 56(3), 439-456.

    This article is concerned with interregional trade dynamics between Elam and Mesopotamia in the early to mid-first millennium BC. During the seventh century BC, two great famines in the Neo-Elamite kingdom, of which climatological changes were a major cause, were documented in the textual records. An era of megadrought made grain procurement from the neighboring regions essential to feed the Neo-Elamite lowland population. This article further explores the impact of the two Neo-Elamite famines and “drought of the century” on the commercial and political mechanisms in the Upper Persian Gulf region.

  • Iran, Volume 61, Issue 1 (2023)

    The table of contents of the latest issue (61/1) of the journal Iran:

    • Ali Khayani & Kamal Aldin Niknami: More Early Bronze Age Seal Impressions from Chogha Maran, Western Central Zagros
    • Yasmina Wicks: Probing the Margins in Search of Elamite Children
    • Davide Salaris: The Equestrian Relief of Hung-e Azhdar: A Historical Memory for the Dynastic Lineages of Elymais
    • Esmaeil Sharahi, Hossein Sedighian & Meisam Nikzad: Excavation at Tahyaq – A Subterranean Rock-Cut Architecture Complex in Khomein, Markazi Province, Iran
    • Saeed Amirhajloo & Hossein Sedighian: Recent Archaeological Research in South Iran: Excavation at the Old City of Sirjan (The Site of Qal’eh Sang)
    • Marc Czarnuszewicz: Challenging Narratives of “Missionary” Ismaʿilism in Buyid Iran: Reconsidering the Sira of al-Muʾayyad fī al-Din al-Shirazi through Socio-economic Contextualisation
    • Denis Hermann & Fabrizio Speziale: Scientific Knowledge and Religious Milieu in Qajar Iran: Negotiating Muslim and European Renaissance Medicine in the Subtleties of Healing
    • Kioumars Ghereghlou: A Forgotten Money Heist: The 1746 Mission of Nadir Shah’s Chief Merchant in Russia Revisited
  • Susa and Elam II

    Tavernier, Jan, Elynn Gorris & Katrien De Graef (eds.). 2023. Susa and Elam II: History, language, religion and culture (MDP 59). Leiden: Brill.

    Susa and Elam II: History, Language, Religion and Culture presents 16 contributions on various topics, all related to the history of Susa and Elam, both situated in the southwest of modern-day Iran. More specifically, the volume is the proceedings of an international conference held at the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) from 6 to 9 July 2015. There are four main sections (history, language, religion, and culture) containing articles by Belgian and internationally renowned researchers, as well as some young scholars, specialized in Susian and Elamite studies. The contributions cover various themes such as royal names, diplomatic history, Elamite weights, and socio-environmental history among others.

  • An Elamite Duck Weight

    Wicks, Yasmina & Javier Álvarez-Mon. 2022. An Elamite Duck Weight in the Susa Museum: New evidence for the Behbahan Plain in the late seventh/early sixth century BCE. Arta 2022.004.

    Arjan duck-shaped weight, Susa Museum. Photographs kindly provided by: [a, b, d] Ehsan Yaghmaie and [c, e, f] Loghman Ahmadzadeh, courtesy of the Susa World Heritage Base.

    The importance of the Behbahan plain within the political framework of Elam was assured by its geographic position as a crossroads of routes connecting Susiana, Fars, and the Persian Gulf. However, the only archaeological cited for this view remains the elite late seventh/early sixth century BCE tomb unearthed near Arjan during the damming of the Marun river in 1982. Another find from the area that adds evidence for the role of the plain at this time is an inscribed limestone duck weight in the Susa Museum, recently published erroneously as coming from Susa. This paper corrects the provenience of the weight, clarifies its date, describes its iconography and manufacture, and contemplates its significance for evaluating the history of the Behbahan plain and the pre-Achaemenid Elamite administration.

  • Making Peace in the Ancient World

    Lanfranchi, Giovanni B., Simonetta Ponchia and Robert Rollinger (eds.). 2022. Making Peace in the Ancient World: Proceedings of the 7th Melammu Workshop, Padova, 5–7 November 2018 (Melammu Workshops and Monographs 5). Münster: Zaphon.

    Table of Contents

    Giovanni B. Lanfranchi / Simonetta Ponchia / Robert Rollinger: Introduction

    Antonio Daniele: Saluto dell’Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova

    I Key Note Lectures

    Paolo Matthiae: The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Syria and Iraq and the Perspective of a Rebirth

    Marc Van De Mieroop: Making Peace in the Ancient Near East

    Kurt A. Raaflaub: Making and Experiencing Peace in the Ancient World

    II Ancient Near East and Egypt

    Manfred Bietak: The Antagonism between Animosity and Peace-making in Ancient Egypt: Between Ideology and Practical Foreign Policy: An Extended Synopsis

    Seth Richardson: Raiders, Neighbours, and Night-time: “Hybrid Peace” in Babylonia

    Stefano de Martino: Making Peace in the Hittite Kingdom

    Salvatore Gaspa: Making Peace in the Ancient Near East of the First Millennium BCE: The Case of the Assyrian Empire

    Martti Nissinen: Peace and Peacemaking in the Hebrew Bible

    Ann C. Gunter: Commemorating the End of Conflict in the Ancient Near East: Material Perspectives

    Matthew Waters: Peace in Pieces: Making Peace in Elam

    Josef Wiesehöfer: Peace and Views of Peace in Achaemenid Iran

    III The Mediterranean Worlds and Beyond

    Christoph Schäfer: Making Peace in the Hellenistic World

    Wolfgang Spickermann: Problems of Making Peace in the Roman Republic: The Case of Appius Claudius Caecus and King Pyrrhus

    Sven Günther: Frames of Making Peace and Treaties in the Roman Empire

    Umberto Roberto: Making Peace with the Goths and the Burial of Athanaric in Constantinople (January 381): A Note on Jordanes, Getica 28, 142–145

    Johannes Preiser-Kapeller: Many Eyes of the World? Making Peace between Byzantium and Other Empires, 600–1200 CE

    Index