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ELAM

(Heb. ʿêlām)

(PLACE)

Name denoting both a region in highland Fars province (Iran) around the modern city of Shiraz, the ancient capital of which was Anshan (Tal-i Malyan), and a state, the size of which fluctuated throughout its history and at times incorporated modern Khuzistan, parts of Luristan, and western Kerman as well as the heartland of Fars. The Table of Nations (Gen. 10:22; 1 Chr. 1:17) lists Elam, along with Assur, as a son of Shem, undoubtedly because of the historical connections between Elam and her Mesopotamian neighbors (cf. the role of Elamite archers in the Assyrian and Babylonian armies; Isa. 22:6; Jer. 49:35), rather than for any ethnolinguistic reason (Elamite is unrelated to either Akkadian or Sumerian).

More confusing for Bible commentators throughout history, however, is the statement identifying Susa (Heb. šūšan), a large, multi-period site in northern Khuzistan where the events played out in the book of Esther took place, as a city “in the province of Elam” (Dan. 8:2). Many of the personal names in the MT of Esther are indeed Elamite, but as the cuneiform sources clearly show, Susa (Akk. kurŠū-šá-an/Šu-šu-un) was the capital of Susiana (Šu-še-en/Šu-sá-an^ki), and Anshan was the capital of Elam (thus Gudea Statue B.6.64-69, “smote the city of Anshan in/of Elam”). The fact that Elam, in the sense of the political state of this name rather than the territorial homeland in Fars, periodically annexed Susiana and turned Susa into an important “Elamite” city should not obscure the fact that Elam only included Susiana in a political sense and was never synonymous with this eastern extension of the Mesopotamian alluvium in a geographical sense. This is not to deny, however, that from the distant, Israelite perspective, most people probably identified Susiana with Elam. As many commentators on Jer. 49:35-39 have noted, Elam represented, apart from anything else, one of the most remote entities on Israel’s eastern geographical horizon, and as such it is scarcely surprising that an accurate understanding of the difference between Elam and Susiana escaped most of the Bible-reading public, scholars and laity alike, until quite recently. This confused perspective may be contrasted with the geographically accurate perceptions of the authors of the Babylonian Talmud who scrupulously distinguished Be Huzaë (lowland Khuzistan) from Elam (highland Fars). Similarly the Greek geographer Strabo strictly distinguished Elymais, long identified with biblical Elam, from Susis or Susiana (Geog. 15.3.12).

There is little of substance regarding Elam in either the OT or NT. Gen. 14:1 preserves the name of Kedor-laomer (Chedorlaomer), called “king of Elam,” but he is almost certainly not Kutir-nahhunte II, the Elamite king who brought about the fall of the Kassite dynasty (ca. 1155 b.c.) and a figure with whose name he has often been assimilated. Although the story of Esther and Ahasuerus related in the book of Esther unfolded at Shushan the palace, this was in the context of Susa’s role as a winter residence for the Achaemenid kings after 520 when Darius I began construction of a palace there, and postdates the last politically consolidated Elamite dynasty (of the so-called Neo-Elamite period, ca. 750-500). When Jews from Elam, along with their Median and Parthian brethren, appeared in Jerusalem at Pentecost (Acts 2:9), they served to illustrate the diverse language groups “out of every nation under heaven” present in the city and must have been viewed as foreigners from the distant east.

The biblical references to Elam give no hint of the historical importance of this, one of Mesopotamia’s fiercest adversaries from the 3rd millennium until Assurbanipal’s sack of Susa in 646. Contemporaries of the Old Akkadian kings, the Elamite Dynasty of Awan succumbed to the forces of Sargon of Akkad, inaugurating a period of growing Mesopotamian control over Susa and its hinterland. Nevertheless, the Elamite king Puzur-inshushinak managed to acquire control over portions of Mesopotamia before he was routed by Ur-nammu, founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. 2100). It was another Elamite king, however, Kindattu the Shimashkian, who plundered Ur and led Ibbi-sin, the last king of the Ur III dynasty, into captivity in Anshan where he died. From the late 19th to the mid-18th century, moreover, it was the sukkal of Elam, whom Zimri-lim of Mari, Hammurabi of Babylon, and Rim-sin of Larsa referred to as “great king of Elam,” whose position in the region was paramount and marks the Elamites as one of the premier powers in Western Asia during the Old Babylonian period. Hammurabi’s eventual defeat of the Elamites neutralized their power for several centuries, but a resurgence was experienced in the Middle Elamite period (ca. 1400-1100), and one of the Middle Elamite kings, Kutir-nahhunte II, is credited with bringing about the demise of the Kassite dynasty ca. 1155. Scarcely 30 years later, however, the Elamites were defeated by Nebuchadnezzar I. By the late 9th century the Elamites had again become a vexation to their western neighbors, this time the Assyrians, whose sack of Susa in 646 dealt a severe blow to the Neo-Elamite kingdom, which was, however, still extant until the coming of Cyrus the Great.

Except for the possible reference to Kedor-laomer (Gen. 14:1), none of this history is even hinted at in the Bible, but this is undoubtedly due to the fact that firsthand knowledge of Elam only came in the postexilic period, particularly after Elam had been absorbed politically into the Achaemenid Empire. By this point, however, it was scarcely a power to be reckoned with.

Bibliography. P. O. Harper, J. Aruz, and F. Tallon, eds., The Royal City of Susa (New York, 1992); W. G. Lambert, “The Fall of the Cassite Dynasty to the Elamites: An Historical Epic,” in H. Gasche, et al., eds., Cinquante-deux reflexions sur le Proche-Orient ancien (Gent, 1994), 67-72; J. Simons, The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament (Leiden, 1959); R. Zadok, “Notes on Esther,” ZAW 98 (1986): 105-10.

D. T. Potts

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ELAM

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)