Elam and Persia.

• Author: Yamauchi, Edwin
• Position: Book review

Elam and Persia. Edited by JAVIER ALVAREZ-MON and MARK B. GARRISON. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 2011. Pp. xviii + 493, illus. $79.50.

This collection of essays arose from the sessions of the American Schools of Oriental Research at the 2003 conference in Philadelphia, which was the first time since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that "Iranian Archaeology" was highlighted.

Elam was a large area in southwestern Iran, with a civilization which interacted with the ancient Sumerians in the third millennium B.C.E. Its capital was Susa, in the lowland area of Khuzestan, 150 miles north of the Persian Gulf. Another important city of Elam was Ansan, which was identified in 1972 with Tall-Malyan, a large mound 30 miles northwest of Persepolis in the highlands, about 300 miles southeast of Susa. But so far very little evidence has been recovered of a presumptive kingdom of Ansan. The contributors to this volume are convinced that it was not the Medes but the Elamites who were the prime contributors to the emerging Achaemenid Empire.

The volume, which is dedicated to Pierre Amiet, contains contributions from fourteen international scholars. In addition to an introduction and a postscript by the editors, there are thirteen essays subdivided among three headings: archaeology (2), texts (6), and images (5).

The first essay, "A Note on the Limits of Ansan," is by D. T. Potts, who is the author of a seminal essay quoted by many of the contributors, "Cyrus the Great and the Kingdom of Anshan," in Birth of the Persian Empire, ed. V. S. Curtis and S. Stewart (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 7-28. There he noted that Cyrus the Great and his ancestors were identified in the famous Akkadian Cyrus Cylinder and other contemporary documents as kings of Ansan, a claim which if taken at face value means that Cyrus was really an Elamite and not a Persian. In this article Potts argues that the title "king of Ansan" was not an archaizing title, but referred to an actual political entity of the sixth century B.C.E., albeit of the city of Ansan rather than a kingdom, for which there is as yet no material evidence.

Elizabeth Carter ("Landscapes of Death in Susiana during the Last Half of the 2nd Millennium B.C.") discusses the possible significance of the variety of tomb types in Susiana: tombs in the earth, tombs in jars, and brick-vaulted tombs. Carter argues for the possibility of secondary burials: "The different burial types--plain earth, jar, and vaulted...