ELAM. – Territory (Akkadian Nim-ma-ki, “the high country,” Greek Ἐλαμαΐς), bordered on the south by the Persian Gulf, on the west by Chaldea, on the north by Assyria and Media, and on the east by Persia. The Elamites (Elamir) therefore inhabited the country situated to the north-west of Sumer and Akkad.
The plain was called Anšan or Aššan, and the hilly and mountainous region Nimma or Elamma, the “highland”: these names were later applied to the entire region and became confused. Susa, the principal city, lay in the area between the Ulai and the Ididi, eight or ten leagues beyond the first appearance of the hills.
The Elamites were a mixed population. The Semitic element held an important place among them, since it succeeded in having its script and language adopted for inscriptions over different and very long periods. This also resulted from the influence of the neighbouring Sumerians and Akkadians, who imposed upon E. a sovereignty that was sometimes real and sometimes merely nominal.
The Anšanite element was predominant in number and naturally reacted against the Semitic Elamite population. As political conditions changed, the language of the documents changed as well, and exclusively Anšanite inscriptions are encountered. Thus the cuneiform texts of Susa served two different languages: Semitic Elamite, which approaches Akkadian, and Anšanite Elamite, which some scholars consider related to Georgian, the last representative of the group of Alarodian languages.
The religion was based on a crude polytheism. In later times the divinities that had formerly been venerated as the principal ones declined.
The long historical period (ca. 3000–640 B.C.) gave rise to a transformation of the script (pictorial, linear, cuneiform), an evolution of the language (Proto-Elamite, Elamite, medieval Anšanite, recent Anšanite), and also a religious evolution.
In the political history of E. there were upheavals, changes of dynasties, foreign occupations of parts of the country, or, in times of security and prosperity, thrusts towards the south and south-east. Mesopotamia attracted this people of mountaineers; perhaps it was therefore not by chance that Akkadian expressed with the same ideogram the idea of elu (“high” and “Elamite”) and tamba = “fly.” The Elamites were stinging and invasive flies that left the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians no peace.
Already Sargon I (ca. 4360 B.C.) of Akkad (v.), perhaps provoked, went to war against E. and defeated it, conquering its territory. Hammurapi was also victorious over the Elamites (ca. 1700 B.C.). Later, the fratricidal wars between the two Semitic peoples, Assyria and Babylonia, enabled E. to avenge its earlier defeats. Around 1200, Sutruk-Nahhunte, king of E., occupied Babylonia, defeated and killed Zababa-Som-iddin, king of Babylon, and, together with his son Kuttur-Nahhunte, destroyed or plundered Sippar and a hundred other Babylonian cities, carrying off their precious objects, even monuments such as the stele of Sargon and of Narâm-Sin, the code of Hammurapi, etc.; all these precious monuments were found at Susa, where they had been deported.
An Elamite, libri-biti-apal-ussur (ca. 1000), was the founder of the seventh dynasty, called that of the Cassites, in Babylonia, and dwelt there for six years upon the throne. In the 8th and 7th centuries B.C., while the power of Assyria was at its height, E., having allied itself with weak Babylonia (v.), resisted the troops of Sargon II without triumphing over them, and suffered a memorable defeat near Kiš at the hands of Sennacherib’s army. The successors of this Assyrian king, Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, left neither Babylon nor E., still its ally, in peace. In 640 the territory of E. was occupied: its capital, Susa, was besieged, conquered, and partly destroyed by Assurbanipal. The country of E. then disappeared from the ranks of the great powers.
Until 612 (the destruction of Nineveh), E. became an Assyrian province; thereafter it was subject to the Medes, the Persians, the Seleucids, and, in the 3rd century B.C., the Arsacids.
E. IN THE BIBLE. — Several biblical books mention the land and people of E. In Gen. 10:22 and I Par. 17 (the sons of Shem are “E., Assur ...”), the Bible attributes a Semitic origin to the Elamite people, which agrees at least in part with profane history. Another historical passage, Gen. 14:1, which speaks of kings of the East fighting against the Pentapolis of the Dead Sea, defeated by Abraham, who had hastened to defend his nephew Lot, gives the name of a king of E., Choderlahomor (v.). The two elements of the name Kudhr a Lagamor frequently occur in the proper names of ancient Elamite traditions. However, the name of this king of E. has not yet been found in profane inscriptions. Esd. 4:9 also lists the Elamites among the various peoples deported from the eastern regions who constituted the new Samaritan people. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel raise their voices against E., as against all the other regions then in prominence (cf. Is. 11:11; 21:2; 22:6; Ier. 25:25; 49:34 ff.; Ex. 32:24). A few years before the annihilation of E., the prophet Jeremiah announces it (Ier. 49:34-39); he finally predicts the return of the Elamite prisoners “in the latter days.”