Tag: Elam

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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.

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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

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The Decipherment of Linear Elamite Writing

Desset, François, Kambiz Tabibzadeh, Matthieu Kervran, Gian Pietro Basello & Gianni Marchesi. 2022. The Decipherment of Linear Elamite Writing. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 112 (1), 11-60.

Linear Elamite writing was used in southern Iran in the late 3rd/early 2nd millennium BCE (ca. 2300–1880 BCE). First discovered during the French excavations at Susa from 1903 onwards, it has so far resisted decipherment. The publication of eight inscribed silver beakers in 2018 provided the materials and the starting point for a new attempt; its results are presented in this paper. A full description and analysis of Linear Elamite of writing, employed for recording the Elamite language, is given here for the first time, together with a discussion of Elamite phonology and the biscriptualism that characterizes this language in its earliest documented phase.

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Chogha Zanbil // چغازنبیل

مفیدی نصرآبادی، بهزاد. ۱۴۰۰. چغازنبیل: بافت شهری و جنبه‌های معماری در ایلام باستان. تهران: انتشارات دکتر محمود افشار.

Mofidi Nasrabadi, Behzad. 2022. Choghā Zanbil: Bāft-e shahrī va janbah-hā-ye meʻmārī dar Īlām-e bāstān [Chogha Zanbil: The Urban Environment and Architectural Features in Ancient Elam]. Tehran: Dr. Mahmoud Afshar Publication.

کتاب چغازنبیل: بافت شهری و جنبه‌های معماری در ایلام باستان شرح مفصلی از ساختار بناها در چغازنبیل از جمله زیگورات، معابد خدایان گوناگون، کاخ‌ها و دیگر فضاهای موجود در این محوطه را به دست می‌دهد. این اثر که پژوهش‌های پیشین نویسنده در این خصوص به زبان آلمانی را گرد آورده و آنها را به زبان فارسی ارائه می‌دهد، ملاحظاتی مفید نحوه سکونت و اقتصاد شهری و همچنین طراحی و برآورد حجم کارهای ساختمانی اجراشده را نیز شامل می‌شود. علاوه بر آن، زمینه‌های تاریخی، جغرافیایی و آیینی شکل‌گیری فضای شهری در چغازنبیل نیز به طرز مبسوطی به بحث گذاشته شده است. کتاب حاضر از حیث ارائه تصویری کامل از موضوع مورد بحث حائز اهمیت است.

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Three Women from Elam

Rafiei-Alavi, Babak, Faranak Bahrololoumi & Sabine Klein. 2022. Three women from Elam: A revision of the Haft Tappeh metal plaque. BASOR 387, 171-180.

Top: new drawing of the metal plaque of Haft Tappeh, bottom: old drawing. (Drawings by B. Rafiei-Alavi, bottom drawing after Negahban 1991: Ill. 4)

The metal plaque of Haft Tappeh was found more than 60 years ago, and except for a few scenes on terracotta plaques and cylinder seals from both Elam and Mesopotamia with similar but not identical settings, it still has no known parallels in metal and remains a unique example of Elamite art. The present article is a study of this object from the heartland of the Elamite kingdom in the Khuzestan Plain. It revisits the scenic plaque and attempts to correct some of the misunderstandings regarding the identification of its iconography and symbology based on new photos, X-ray images, and lab analysis. The article also tries to place the plaque in its proper spatial and temporal context, using comparative methods and chemical and isotope analysis.

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Power and Politics in the Neo-Elamite Kingdom

Gorris, Elynn. 2020. Power and Politics in the Neo-Elamite Kingdom (Acta Iranica, 60). Leuven: Peeters.

Power and Politics in the Neo-Elamite Kingdom (c. 1100-520 BC) documents one of the most obscure episodes in the political history of ancient southwestern Iran. Elam’s strategic position between the Mesopotamian alluvial plain, the Persian Gulf and the Iranian highlands made it a target for territorial expansion of the Neo-Assyrian empire. However, the ability of the Neo-Elamite kings to engage in a political alliance with the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, the flexibility of the Neo-Elamite government system and the dynamics between the various ethnic and social groups living within the multiple valleys of Elam protected the Elamite heartland for centuries against the continuous military threat. Elam became an indisputable partner in an inter-regional network of Mesopotamian states until the emergence of the Persian empire reshaped the political landscape of the Ancient Near East.

By re-evaluating the dynastic lineage of Neo-Elamite kings, the geopolitical power of the Neo-Elamite kingdom and the (trans-)formation the Elamite government system in the 1st millennium BC through written and archaeological evidence, this book aims to improve our understanding of the last centuries of Elam.

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The Art of Elam

Álvarez-Mon, Javier. 2020. The Art of Elam CA. 4200–525 BC. London & New York: Routledge.

Not unlike a gallery of historical paintings, this comprehensive treatment of the rich heritage of ancient Iran　showcases a visual trail of the evolution of human society, with all its leaps and turns, from its origins in the earliest villages of southwest Iran at around 4200 BC to the rise of the Achaemenid Persian empire in CA. 525 BC. Richly illustrated with 1,450 photographs, 190 line drawings, and digital reconstructions of hundreds of artefacts—some of which have never before been published—The Art of Elam goes beyond formal and thematic boundaries to emphasize the religious, political, and social contexts in which art was created and functioned. Such a magisterial study of Elamite art has never been written, making The Art of Elam CA. 4200-525 BC a ground-breaking publication essential to all students of ancient art and to our current understanding of the civilizations of the ancient Near East.

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Between Highlands and Lowlands

Wicks, Yasmina. 2019. Between highlands and lowlands. The Ram Hormuz Plain in the neo-Elamite and early Achaemenid periods, and comments on five burials from the Fort Mound at Tal-i Ghazir. Arta 2019.002.


The plain of Ram Hormuz was a strategically important area of southwest Iran connecting the Susiana lowlands with the Zagros highlands, and undoubtedly a critical zone of Elamite and Iranian interaction in the centuries leading up to the emergence of the Persian Empire. Its archaeological remains must therefore be regarded as a vital key to our comprehension of the processes of acculturation that gave rise to the Elamo Persian culture of the early Achaemenid period. While the plain has been extensively surveyed, its only excavated site remains Tal-i Ghazir where just two seasons of excavation were conducted in 1948/49 by Donald E. McCown under the auspices of the Oriental Institute. McCown worked in three separate mounds— Mounds A and B, and the so-called Fort Mound—but he never published his results. Almost half a century later, Elizabeth Carter (1994) published a series of burials in the Fort Mound from his field notes, and another two decades later, Abbas Alizadeh (2014) published the complete records of the Tal-i Ghazir excavations. The purpose of this paper is to outline the evidence for the Neo-Elamite (ca. 1000 525 BCE) and Achaemenid periods (ca. 525-330 BCE) collected during the surveys across the Ram Hormuz plain and the excavations at Tal-i Ghazir, with special attention to the burials in the Fort Mound.

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Profiling Death

Wicks, Yasmina. 2019. Profiling Death. Neo-Elamite Mortuary Practices, Afterlife Beliefs, and Entanglements with Ancestors (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 98). Leiden: Brill.

Recent scholarship has begun to unveil the culturally rich and dynamic landscape of southwest Iran during the first half of the first millennium BCE (aka the Neo-Elamite period) and its significance as the incubation ground for the Persian Empire. In Profiling Death. Neo-Elamite Mortuary Practices, Afterlife Beliefs, and Entanglements with Ancestors, Yasmina Wicks continues the investigation of this critical epoch from the perspective of the mortuary record, bringing forth fascinating clues as to the ritual practices, beliefs, social structures and individual identities of Elam’s lowland and highland inhabitants. Enmeshed with its neighbours, yet in many ways culturally distinct, Elam receives its due treatment here as a core component of the ancient Near East.

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The Monumental Reliefs of the Elamite Highlands

Javier Álvarez-Mon. 2019. The Monumental Reliefs of the Elamite Highlands: A Complete Inventory and Analysis (from the Seventeenth to the Sixth Century BC). Eisenbrauns.


The Monumental Reliefs of the Elamite Highlands documents and analyzes for the first time a corpus of eighteen monumental highland reliefs from the Elamite civilization in ancient Iran, which—hitherto preserved by their remote location and anonymous existence—have recently become imperiled by an influx of tourists and the development of the surrounding landscapes. With this book, Javier Álvarez-Mon aims to safeguard this important part of Iran’s cultural heritage.
The eighteen reliefs presented in this volume are spread across the valley of Izeh/Malamir (Xong-e Azdhar, Shah Savar, Shekaft-e Salman, and Kul-e Farah), the Ghale Tol plain (Qal-e Tul), the Mamasani Fahliyan river region (Kurangun), and the Marvdasht plain (Naqsh-e Rustam). In his analysis of these reliefs, Álvarez-Mon draws from the complementary disciplines of art history and archaeology, giving equal weight to the archaeological context of these artifacts and traditional methods of artistic analysis in order to determine the nature and significance of each artifact’s form and theme. At the same time, the book’s dual emphases on ritual-religious and aesthetic-ecological phenomena respond to the contemporary challenges of the dissociation of human existence from nature and the commodification of the environment on an unsustainable scale, presenting the preservation of this remarkable corpus of monumental art as a matter of urgency.


Richly illustrated with hundreds of color photographs and line drawings, The Monumental Reliefs of the Elamite Highlands is sure to become an invaluable reference to scholars who study the Elamite and other ancient civilizations.