The Art of the Elamites(Part 1.)

Not only the king of Ur, whose dynasty had ruled over all of Mesopotamia and Elam, but also the patron goddess of Ur, Ningal, seem to have been led away into captivity. [2] This statue was not the only one which was taken to Elam. Several centuries later an Elamite king Shutruk-Nakhunte dragged two of the greatest works of Mesopotamian art from the town of Sippar [north of Babylon on, the Euphrates] to Susa: the stele of Naramsin of the Akkad dynasty and that of Hammurabi of Babylon. The French excavators of Susa discovered these monuments, as well as others which had been brought from Eshnunna in the Diyala valley, in north-eastern Mesopotamia. [3]

The divine and royal statues of the ancient Near East were meant to assure for the king the enduring protection of the deity, well being and a long life. Reliefs which showed a military victory of a ruler or his performance of a ritual action were surely intended to eternalize the effectiveness of such deeds. In the country of their origin works of art of this type must have been considered charged with beneficial power. Hostile intruders therefore would destroy them or lead them into captivity as representative of the conquered peoples--like Ningal of Ur. Often the conqueror had the original inscription erased and his own name and even a record of his conquest engraved on the captured statue or stele. To erase the name of a person literally meant to kill his memory.

With the destruction of Ur the Elamites under a king of Simash liberated themselves from Mesopotamian tutelage, but not for long. The successors of the Third Dynasty of Ur as rulers of Mesopotamia, the kings of Isin and of Larsa, continued a policy, developed earlier in relations with Elam, of 'military pressures and diplomatic marriages'. In the course of the second millennium B.C., however, some forceful Elamite ruler occasionally succeeded not only in establishing his independence from Mesopotamian interference but also in extending briefly his influence on regions lying on the western borders of Elam. In turn, some powerful kings of Mesopotamia like Hammurabi of Babylon claimed at least partial domination of Elam. Between these highlights in the political history of Elam and Mesopotamia there were long periods in which no major military engagement is recorded between the two countries. In some measure exchange of goods and ideas certainly must have taken place between Susa and several of the rich Mesopotamian towns, especially Lagash, Larsa and Eshnunna. But Babylonian texts from the first half of the second millennium indicate a decline in the assumed large-scale trade of earlier times, when ships are thought to have plied the Persian Gulf with timber, silver and tin from [p. 45] Susa and to have returned with agricultural products such as barely and oil. [4]

The clay tablets on which historical texts were written and on which merchants recorded their business transactions mention towns and countries of Elam, but they rarely give any indication of their geographical location. Anshan, which seems at times to have been the most important region of Iran aside from Elam, may have been situated in the Bakhtiari mountains. Susa probably dominated the entire plain irrigated by the Kerkha and Karun rivers. Strong rulers of Susa probably also reigned over the green pastures of the valleys of Luristan, which would have been of great importance for the supply of the capital with sheep--and later with horses for the army.

Little is known about the internal history of Elam. The texts which contain historical information are not numerous and are not yet fully understood by modern scholars. The language, Elamite, is neither Semitic nor Indo-European, and its relation to other languages is not yet clarified.

In periods of strong influence from Mesopotamia the texts, economic and legal records, were written in Sumerian and Akkadian, that is, in the languages of Mesopotamia. There are indications that the genuinely Elamite business practice was entirely oral, so that writing need not have been an integral element of Elamite culture. [5]

It is interesting to note some evidence of similarly oral business practice in the records found in the Hurrian region of northern Mesopotamia, in Nuzi near Kirkuk. Furthermore, other characteristics common to the legal documents of both Susa and Nuzi exist. This points to a relationship also manifested in the considerable proportion of Hurrian proper names found among the princes who played a role in the political history of the country. [6] Such relations between the populations of northern Mesopotamia and Elam are also reflected in the numerous Mitannian or Hurrian-style cylinder seals found at various sites in Iran. Only at Susa and in its immediate vicinity, where local Susian seal-cutters established a distinctive Elamite tradition was there a pronounced scarcity of seals of Mitannian or Hurrian style in the excavations.

These cylinder seals which were found at Susa and at the neighbouring site of Tchoga Zanbil serve to establish a framework of glyptic art in Elam from the Old Elamite period of the early second millennium B.C., through the Middle Elamite period of the second half of the second millennium, to the Neo-Elamite period of the early centuries of the first millennium B.C. [7] Occasionally this framework may serve for the classification of larger works of art which are uninscribed and undated. For this reason we begin the discussion of Elamite art with the cylinder seals. [p. 46]

Cylinder seals were produced in great numbers in the Old Babylonian period, about 1900 to 1600 B.C. The same is true of Susa, where we call the style of the seals Old Elamite. These Old Elamite cylinders conform to the Old Babylonian ones in the ubiquitous rendering of scenes of worship, a motif inherited from the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur. But certain details characterize seals as originating in Susa: for example, a tree at the end of a scene, or the placing before the deity of an offering-table bearing a bird, or some sacrificial animal, rarely a fish. [In Babylonia the tree design is not found in seals of that period, and the deity or its image is never shown partaking of food or even receiving a food offering.] Here distinctive ritual practices of Elam manifest themselves, practices which are reflected several centuries later in Assyria. These Old Elamite cylinders are often made of the black bitumen found near the oil-fields of the region. This material can be worked very easily, and the seal-cutter could indicate the surface of an object by a series of short incisions, as in the throne and the palmtree of Figure 20. The imprint of such a cylinder seal shows ragged outlines and looks crude. A second style is smoother. The example of the latter shown here has a curious tree growing from a knoll. The branches of the tree with their leaves or blossoms not only grow upward but also point downward. This might have been a means to fill the field, but one should not rule out the representation of a candelabra-like artificial construction. Perhaps the style of this cylinder is slightly later than that of Figure 20. [8]

A Middle Elamite style of the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. is here represented by a cylinder which can be dated approximately on the basis of similar imprints found on tablets of Nuzi. [9] It shows a carefully engraved scene with several figures. One of these is marked as a deity by a horned crown and sits on a throne, the back of which ends in an animal's head. This feature can be traced to other cylinders of the group, in which the god actually sits on an animal. We encounter here the characteristic Iranian practice of decorating and enlivening inanimate objects with animal heads. Both deity and worshipper [p. 47] have narrow waists; the worshipper who carries a sacrificial goat in his arms has his hair cut 'en brosse' or swept upward, a feature often observed in renderings of Elamites. In a subsidiary scene a worshipper appears before a standing deity, and in the upper register a lion pursues a horned animal, an ancient Mesopotamian and Iranian motif which appears in many different styles until the latest periods of Iranian art. This cylinder was found in a sanctuary in Luristan where it had probably been brought from Susa.

The next stage of Elamite cylinder seals became known through Ghirshman's discovery of a deposit of such seals in chapels of the sanctuary of Tchoga Zanbil. With few exceptions these cylinder seals probably belong to the latter part of the Middle Elamite period, in which King Untashgal [c. 1265-1245 B.C.] [10] built the sanctuary. A considerable number of these cylinders, of which we give one example here, resemble the early Kassite cylinders of Babylonia, dated in the fifteenth century B.C., in the use of attenuated figures carved with thin lines by means of a fine drill. However, the scene of adoration or worship shown here is characterized as typically Elamite by the servant who holds a fan behind the throne. The shelf with vessels in the upper field and the small goblin, more human than ape-like, are also long-lived Elamite motifs. This scene of worship of a deity may not have differed much from an audience with one of the great lords of Elam.

Most of these cylinders of Kassite style, which are among the finest found at Tchoga Zanbil, and others of good quality were made of deep blue glass. Such use of glass may ultimately go back to Egyptian influence. The seals of a much cruder style, here called common style, were made of a related composition, namely faience. An example of the common style shows a simplified version of the scene just described. Here the worshipper has taken over the function of the servant with the fan. The seated figure, probably a deity, raises a vessel to his mouth. The action here depicted and the shape of the vessel are most characteristic of this group of cylinder seals.

A later Neo-Elamite version of the scene is given in Figure 25. The smaller size of the cylinder and the proportions of the figures are comparable to those of [p. 48] Assyrian cylinders of the ninth century B.C. This dating is also suggested by the pointed headgear of the seated figure found in a Neo-Elamite relief from Susa [11] and in a rock relief at Naqsh-i Rustem, which will be discussed later.

Among the cylinders with religious themes we have chosen one which shows kneeling gods surrounded by streams of water that seem to issue from their shoulders and from their arms or their hands. [12]

From the fearful and destructive world of demons which can be successfully fought only with the help of the very same demons, if these are properly manipulated, comes the winged lion-headed figure of another cylinder seal. With his bird claws the demon stands on two kneeling ibexes and with each hand raises a gazelle by the hind legs. A related theme is shown in Figure 28, but there are several reasons for suggesting a later, possibly early Neo-Elamite origin for this seal. Such a date would be important for the classification of some of the Luristan bronzes which the demon resembles in abbreviation of form and in the curved slender neck. The figures are attenuated and lack the solid verticality of the preceding seal. Moreover, the wedge-shaped fillers are not found in any other seal from Tchoga Zanbil, but they are reminiscent of the single wedges of cuneiform writing occasionally scattered in the field of Assyrian cylinders of the early first millennium B.C. Lastly, the cylinder is made of bitumen and was not found in the chapels with the other cylinders, which are mostly of faience or glass. [p. 50]

Faience continued as a favoured material for seals in Elam , and a cylinder from Susa which again shows the pursuit of a horned animal by a lion belongs even more certainly to the early first millennium B.C. Here, too, the vertical composition has given way to oblique inclination of the animal bodies, and plants of a type common in Assyrian cylinders of the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. rise from the ground-line. Of special interest is the cross, which has branches between the arms. This motif occurs in somewhat related manner on Luristan bronzes and may still be found in Sasanian textile patterns.