Elam
Lost Ancient Superpower
Elam was an ancient state, at times rivaling and dominating the Sumerians who viewed them as their fierce competition for nearly 2000 years; until the rise of Persia who found its central powerbase located inside the Elamite region. Whether Sumer vs Elam, or the latter Babylon vs Persia, these two powerful regions vied for control over Mesopotamia throughout history and continue to struggle today under the guise of new imperial masks. Elam has always remained the true crossroad of empires, a fitting position for the first son of Shem.
As was described in the Book on Nimrod based on numerous references throughout the Midrash, there was fierce competition between the early states of Sumer/Shinar - led by Nimrod himself - the fledgling polity of Babylonia under Amraphel - otherwise known as Hammurabi - and Elam under the ruler Chedorlaomer - descendent of the first son of Shem who led the Elamites often in synchronicity with his soon to be powerful brother in the north, Ashur. Other major kings such as Tidal of the Goyim held influence over the region, and even the previously mentioned Melchezedek must have had some form of independent military control over proto-Jerusalem and the wider transnational religious bureaucracy. Even Abraham’s striking ability to refocus all these rival kings on a singular goal, on God, only served to temporarily shift the leaders focus toward a world war that led them all toward eventual collapse, only for the Neo-Empire version of each state to take another swing at the crown over the next millennium until Alexander permanently silenced them all in a single campaign.
However, during this original war it was actually Chedorlaomer, King of Elam, who called the other kings into alliance to battle with Abraham and the petty city States of the Plain of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zoboim, and Zoara. While many cities were plundered under this pan national alliance, a special force led by Abraham and his loyal servant Eliezer - under the auspicious information of the giant Og - went to rescue Abraham’s nephew Lot from capture with a band of 314 elite men - something equivalent to military special forces. Similar to the story of the elite Spartan 300, it was with a comparatively tiny cohort that Abraham was capable of collapsing the alliance between enemy kings and routing them from the Valley of Siddim. (See the Book of Nimrod for more information on the identities of these kings and a breakdown of the true first world war.)
Elam was not the native name. Elam was actually an exonym - a term given by foreigners for a nation, rather than an endonym, the native term used by the people in reference to themselves. The Elamite language endonym for Elam seems to have been Hatamti1 and possibly Haltamti (Cuneiform Elamite: 𒁹𒄬𒆷𒁶𒋾 halatamti).2 While the identity of the Elamites as a people is generally quite clear, there is a distinction between the city of Susa in the lowland regions, and the highland region typically referred to with the term “Elam”. However, as we do in modern times, the term Elam was often simply applied to the ‘nation’ as we can see from the Torah, which uses Elam to refer to the combined Haltamti peoples, and likely the polity they controlled.
Elam appears to be a region, at times conflated with “Susa” which was typically the capital of the Elamite nation. However, with the discovery of the ancient city of Anshan much further south into the highland region, it is less clear if Elam was originally referring to this area, and not always Susiana, which were two regions combined into a later single nation due to shared ethnic stock.
From the 15th century BCE through the 6th, the rulers of Elam styled themselves as “King of Anshan and Susa”.3 Strikingly, the importance of Anshan continues well into the Persian period with their most notable and important King for the Jewish people, the famed Cyrus the Great, styling himself “King of the city of Anshan”, and using honorifics for his ancestors such as “the great king, king of the city of Anshan”.4 Reportedly this was due to his great grandfather Teispes, who himself used the title “the great king, king of Anshan” from where Teispes seemingly had founded the future Achaemenid Empire. Further hammering down the prominence of Anshan as compared to Susa, in the earliest periods Anshan was five times the size of Susa making it the obvious center of Elamite power.5
However, while Anshan may have been the capital of the Elamite state, Susa was still one of the most important cities in the ancient world. From the story of Esther, we learn Shushan was the capital of the entire Persian Empire during the reign of Ahaseures (Achashverosh) despite the earlier importance of Anshan. We also learn that it was at Shushan where a ‘certain Jew’ named Mordechai lives and from where the Jewish people are saved from a potential genocide at the hands of Haman. Shushan was quite an important place, with one of the larger populations of Judeans even in the Persian period.
One curious connection is actually the Hebrew name Shoshana, which technically means ‘Lily’, but is curiously identical to the city named Susa/Shushana. Similar with other Persian period names like Mordechai (Marduku/Marduk-chai) and Esther (Ishtar) having non-Judaic origins it is very probable Susan is rooted in the famed city of Susa.
From Ezra 4:9 we learn that Assyrian King Sennacherib actually settled a mixed group of colonists in Samaria; four of these groups according to Rashi are Persian peoples (two of them sharing the root “Paras” meaning Persia), but notably among these people are Akkadites/Urukites, Babylonians, Shushanites, and Elamites. Presumably, all four of the major ethnic groups were settled by Sennacherib in Samaria, showing to what lengths rulers prior to the Persians had already gone to eliminate the religious identity of Israel. According to Rabbinic tradition, it was the descendants of these peoples that eventually became the Samaritans with their alternative tradition on Mount Ebal.
Beyond just Ezra, but the combined ‘Ezra-Nehemiah’ both include major references to Shushan, with the actual opening text of Nehemiah beginning “The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. And it came to pass in the month of Kislev [in] the twentieth year that I was in Shushan the capital.” It was at Shushan that Nehemiah meets a Judean named Hanani who informs him of the events in Jerusalem, kicking off his entire book.
Even in the Book of Daniel 8:2 he has a vision at the capital Shushan, specifically named as in Elam - interestingly, not Persia, showing how Elam retained an independent identity subsumed into a larger pan-national ‘Empire’; with a classical Empire being not a nation with uniform identity but a multi-ethnic, multi-national hyper-nation defining the very Empire structure that Persia truly pioneered. From Daniel directly “And I saw in the vision, and it came to pass when I saw-and I was in Shushan the capital, which is in the province of Elam-and I saw in the vision that I was beside the river Ulai.” Much of the later biblical content happens within Elam, showing the prominence of the Jewish community in the city of Susa and the primary target for the audience of these texts being well aware of Elam as the capital of an exotic eastern empire.
While not exactly an accepted canonical Jewish source, the Book of Jubilees was written for and by a Jewish audience, and includes a few references to Susa. From Jubilees 8:21 when listing the inheritance of Shem, it curiously includes “Elam, Asshur, Babel, Susan and Madai, and all the mountains of Ararat”. As we have seen, Madai was clearly given to Japheth, explaining why Persian ethnic peoples are essentially similar to a mix of Europeans and North Indians, both genetically Japhetites. Also mentioned as an inheritance given to Shem from the text is “the whole land of India” which will curiously be extremely relevant for our discussion of Elam very soon. Much of this information is doubled up in Jubilees 9:2, but the text is extremely corrupted and basically makes no sense despite having some explicitly accurate geographic information that we have covered in much deeper context.
However, the strangest info is Jubilees 8:1 where we learn of the wife of Arpachshad “In the twenty-ninth jubilee, in the first week, [1373 A.M.] in the beginning thereof Arpachshad took to himself a wife and her name was Rasu’eja, the daughter of Susan, the daughter of Elam, and she bare him a son in the third year in this week, [1375 A.M.] and he called his name Kainam.” Now, a few things of note, Elam is listed as the father of Susan, but confusingly some translations call Susan a son, and not a daughter making it hard to know the gender identity of this child. If Susan was a girl, it would make perfect sense why Elam’s progeny are left off the list, however just as likely is that Elam was a fairly unified state without any known descendant polities making their entire identity on the Table of Nations summarized by “Elam” alone. Whatever the case may be, the granddaughter of Elam named Rasu’eja marries Arpachshad, who we will see in his own section was perhaps a King of Babylon. We could dig into records for a marriage between a King of Elam’s daughter/granddaughter and a King of Mesopotamia, but it would be a futile effort given we have likely not uncovered this source text and there are numerous such marriages that solidified ancient dynasties claims to certain regions.
Gershevitch, I.; Fisher, William Bayne (1985-06-06). The Cambridge History of Iran. Cambridge University Press. pp. 26–27. ISBN 9780521200912.
Birth of the Persian Empire. Curtis, Vesta Sarkhosh., Stewart, Sarah (Sarah Rosemary Anne), London Middle East Institute., British Museum. London: I.B. Tauris in association with the London Middle East Institute at SOAS and the British Museum. 2005. ISBN 978-1845110628. OCLC 60419092.
D. T. Potts, A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Volume 94 of Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. John Wiley & Sons, 2012 ISBN 1405189886 p743
While reading your valuable article I have the feeling that I am reading about Moroccan tribes and regions/cities ...