From the era of Shimashki we move to the period of the sukkalmahs, a title of some antiquity in Mesopotamia which has been interpreted variously in its Iranian context. The mechanics of the transformation of the line of Shimashkian kings into the line of Susian sukkalmahs is obscure, but one thing is certain: under the sukkalmahs, particularly those of the late nineteenth and early eighteenth centuries BC, the prestige and influence of Elam throughout Western Asia was unprecedented (see De Graef 2011c for an overview). The break-up of the Ur III empire witnessed the rise of independent, rival dynasties in the southern Mesopotamian cities of Isin and Larsa. Isin's power was greatest during the first three quarters of the twentieth century BC, and this was a period in which the Elamites suffered a series of political and military setbacks. But, beginning in the late twentieth century BC, the power of Isin waned as that of Larsa waxed, and the Elamites came to have substantial influence in the kingdom of Larsa. Ultimately we see Elam emerge as the major powerbroker in a web of relations which bound Assyria, Babylonia and other neighbouring regions, such as Eshnunna (in the modern Diyala River basin) and Mari (on the Middle Euphrates in Syria), often in uneasy alliances which eventually broke down. Elam provided the much-sought-after tin which Mari dispensed to the kingdoms of western Syria and Palestine. Elamite involvement with regions to the south and east, such as Dilmun (Bahrain) and Magan (Oman) in the Persian Gulf, and the resource-rich region of Bactria (northern Afghanistan/southern Uzbekistan), is also documented during this period. While the archaeological evidence of this era is abundant at Susa and in some of the plains of northern and eastern Khuzistan, it is slim in Fars, although several important rock reliefs exist. Ultimately, Hammurabi of Babylon put an end to this phase of growth and influence which saw Elam change from a regional to a world (still in the limited Western Asiatic sense) power.

Introduction

The plurality of royal titles which characterized the later Shimashki period at Susa continued, in altered form, throughout the first half of the second millennium BC, that time referred to as the sukkalmah period.

More than fifteen years have passed since the original publication of The Archaeology of Elam in 1999. Much of relevance to Elamite studies has occurred in the intervening years. In addition to the hundreds of new publications that have appeared (for compilations of bibliography see Haerinck and Stevens 2005; De Schacht and Haerinck 2013; Jahangirfar 2015; Mofidi-Nasrabadi 2015), many older works have been consulted here that were not incorporated into the original edition, amounting to an augmentation of the references list by more than 800 titles. Moreover, several important conferences on Elam and Iranian archaeology have taken place. But perhaps most importantly, fieldwork in Iran has been conducted by both Iranian teams and joint expeditions involving Iranian and American, Australian, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish and other scholars (see e.g. Azarnoush and Helwing 2005). These have investigated a wide range of topics touching on nearly all aspects of Elam's history and archaeology.

As a result of these developments, Asya Graf, Archaeology and Renaissance Studies editor at Cambridge University Press, and I decided, in the autumn of 2013, that a second, revised edition of The Archaeology of Elam was warranted. My thanks go to Cambridge University Press, and Asya Graf in particular, for facilitating this revision. While I have no wish to alter the dedication of this book to my family, I would like to acknowledge the large number of colleagues, particularly in Iran, who have shared their knowledge of Elam with me over the years, and furthered the study of this subject. Iranian history and archaeology are nothing if not diverse. I would not wish to suggest that Elam is more worthy of study than many other aspects of Iranian antiquity. Yet having embarked in earnest on the trail of the ancient Elamites many years ago, I am happy to travel down that path yet again, this time with considerably more data at hand than was previously the case.

The emergence of the Persians as a major power in western Iran must have been aided by the sustained Assyrian assault on Elam in the seventh century BC. But it is important to stress that, notwithstanding the severity of Assyrian aggression against Elam, the Elamites were neither annihilated nor reduced to a state of utter insignificance. Although historians and archaeologists long ignored the role of Elam and the Elamite population in the emergence of the better known Achaemenid Persian empire (539–331 BC), this has changed in recent years. The very facts that Cyrus the Great established his capital in the heartland of what had been Anshan (Potts 2011a), that Elamite was the language of the earliest Achaemenid inscriptions and the language of the thousands of administrative texts found at Darius’ city of Persepolis, that a number of Elamite rulers tried to rebel against Persian authority and that Elamite deities continued to be worshipped in the Persian-controlled cities point to the continuation of an Elamite tradition in southwestern Iran long after Cyrus came to power (for overviews of southwestern Iran in the Achaemenid period see e.g. Henkelman 2012a and Boucharlat 2013). Nor was Susa, an important city throughout all earlier periods of Elamite history, neglected by the Achaemenids (see Briant 2010 for an overview), and it is from Susa that much of the archaeological evidence of the period comes (Ghirshman 1954b; Perrot 1981, 1985, 2010, 2013). The survival of Neo-Elamite iconography on cylinder seals used in the Achaemenid period is another phenomenon which attests to the survival and transformation of Elamite identity in the Persian period, as does the use of military equipment specifically designated ‘Elamite’ or ‘Susian’ at this time. In the late Achaemenid period, at the time of Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian empire, we see that the highlands of southwestern Iran were inhabited by a tribal group known as the Uxians, who may well mask the Elamites by another name.

Introduction

The so-called Dynastic Prophecy (II 17–21) made the following prediction concerning the fall of the Neo-Babylonian state: ‘A king of Elam will arise, the sceptre … [he will take?]. He will remove him (the preceding king) from his throne and […].