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Cover: The serene visage of a young Per-sian prince is bracketed by royal guards onone of the stairways at Persepolis, the roy-al city built by Darius I. Persepolis standsas an enduring monument to the kingswho ruled the Persian empire from themid-sixth century BC to 330 BC, whenAlexander the Great defeated Darius III.

End paper: Painted by artist Paul Breeden,the map highlights sites and cities impor-tant in the development of ancient Persia.The icons represent influential culturesand empires between 4000 BC and theseventh century AD. The shaded area ofthe inset shows the geographical extentof the Persian empire under Darius I(522-486 BC), with the red line tracingthe 1,600 -mile route of the Persian- builtRoyal Road, a wonder of its time.Breeden also provided the vignettes forthe timeline on pages 158-159.

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Library of CongressCataloging in Publication DataPersians: masters of empire / by the editors ofTime-Life Books.

p. cm. (Lost civilizations)Includes bibliographical references andindex.ISBN 0-8094-9104-4

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TIk Consultants:

Carol Bier, curator of the Eastern HemisphereCollections at the Textile Museum in Wash-ington, D.C., has served as a consultant to theBrooklyn Museum, Dumbarton Oaks, theRoyal Ontario Museum, and the SmithsonianInstitution, among others. Author of numer-ous articles on Middle Eastern textiles, Bierhas done extensive fieldwork in Syria, Jordan,Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, and Turkey.

Robert Carl Henrickson is a research collabo-rator in the Conservations Analytical Labora-tory of the Smithsonian Institution, concen-trating in Near Eastern Archaeology. Anexpert in the production and distribution ofpottery, intrasettlement residential patterns,and the evolution and dynamics of complexsocieties, he aided with the early developmentand planning for this volume.

Holly Pittman, curator ofAncient Near East-ern Art at the Metropolitan Museum ofArtfor 14 years, is associate professor ofArt His-tory at the University of Pennsylvania, whereshe specializes in the ancient Near East. Shehas done extensive fieldwork in Cyprus, Iran,Iraq, and Syria, and most recendy at a late-fourth-century-BC site in eastern Turkey.

Michael Roaf, former director of the BritishSchool ofArchaeology in Iraq and an associateprofessor at the University of California,Berkeley, is professor of Near Eastern Archae-ology at the University of Munich, Germany.He has excavated exhaustively in Iran, includ-ing five seasons at the Median site ofTepeNush-i Jan, as well as in Iraq, Bahrain, Egypt,and Greece. In addition to writing numerousarticles, he is the author of the Cultural AtlasofMesopotamia and the Ancient Near East.

This volume is one in a series that exploresthe worlds of the past, using the finds of ar-chaeologists and other scientists to bring an-cient peoples and their cultures vividly to life.

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Egypt: Land ofthe PharaohsAztecs: Reigri ofBlood & SplendorPompeii: TIk Vanished CityIncas: Lords ofGold and GloryTIk Holy LandMound Builders & CliffDwellersWondrous Realms ofthe AegeanThe Magnificent MayaSumer: Cities ofEdenChina V Buried KingdomsVikings: Raidersfrom the NorthRamses II: Magnificence on the NileRome: Echoes ofImperial GloryGreece: Temples, Tombs, &" TreasuresAfrica 's Glorious LegacyTIk Celts: Europe's People ofIronTIk Searchfor El DoradoAncient India: Land ofMysteryMesopotamia: TIk Mighty KingsEtruscans: Italy's Lovers ofLifeEarly Europe: Mysteries in Stone

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CONTENTS

ONEHOW THE LAND

OF THE GODS BECAME THE LANDOF THE PERSIANS

6

ESSAY: Flight Paths to Discovery 37

TWOI AM CYRUS,

KING OF THE WORLD46

ESSAY: Persepolis: A Ghostly Grandeur 73

THREETHE DAZZLING REACH

OF DARIUS'S IMPERIAL SPEAR84

ESSAY: The Tribute of Empire 113

FOURTHE RISE AND FALL

AND RISEOF EMPIRES

122

ESSAY: Treasures for the Eye 151

Timeline 158Acknowledgments 160Picture Credits 160Bibliography 161

Index 164

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HOW THE LANDOF THE GODS

BECAMETHE LAND

OF THE PERSIANS

From a second-millennium-BC tombat the Elamite city ofSusa, this life-size

clay head lay next toa skull and may havebeen a portrait ofthe dead man. TheElamites, fierce rivals

of the Babylonians,were precursors of the

royal Persians.

letime around 647 BC, Elam,a mighty kingdom in what is today western Iran, fell to its enemy, theAssyrians. When its vanquisher, Ashurbanipal, returned in triumph toNineveh in present-day Iraq, he summoned a scribe to record his vic-tory. His gloating words might have disappeared into the void hadhe not had them inscribed in cuneiform on a 13 -inch-long, six-sidedcylinder of baked clay that was placed ceremoniously in a wall of thepalace. There, some 2,400 years later in 1854, Iraqi Hormuzd Ras-sam, chief assistant to Nineveh's British excavator, Henry Austen La-yard, freed the prism from its ancient hiding place. The discovery soexcited Rassam that he proceeded to rip down every .wall he couldfind in the palace that might conceal other writings.

The text that provoked such zeal reveals Ashurbanipal as anavenger seeking retribution for the humiliations the Elamites had in-

flicted on the Mesopotamians over the centuries: "Susa, the greatholy city, abode of their gods, seat of their mysteries, I conquered. Ientered its palaces, I dwelt there rejoicing; I opened the treasurieswhere silver and gold, goods and wealth were amassed . . . the treas-ures ofSumer, Akkad and Babylon that the ancient kings of Elam hadlooted and carried away. I destroyed the ziggurat of Susa. I smashed

its shining copper horns. I reduced the temples of Elam to naught;

their gods and goddesses I scattered to the winds. The tombs oftheir

ancient and recent kings I devastated, I exposed to the sun, and I car-ried away their bones toward the land of Ashur. I devastated the

provinces of Elam and on their lands I sowed salt."A man known for his cruelty, Ashurbanipal used such ruth-

lessness not just against his enemies but as a psychological threat tothe vassal states he held in his thrall. Head of a great empire, he wasamong the last rulers of a long succession of ancient city-states

Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, Assurthat had dominated the rich alluvialplains between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers known as Mesopota-mia. Yet even as he recounted his victory over the Elamites, the eraof Mesopotamian dynasties was waning. Eventually the center ofpower would shift to the southeast, a terrain of plain and mountainsin today's Iran whose peoples were now lamenting the devastation ofSusa, their wondrous city.

Susa had long enjoyed an enviable position, straddling as itdid the most direct route from the lowland kingdoms to the moun-tains. It lay about 130 miles northof the Persian Gulf, where theMesopotamian plain spreads east-ward toward a land of extraordi-nary geographical diversity. Al-

though this land contained twouninhabitable salt deserts, it was

rimmed by fertile plateaus. In thenorth, high mountain passes ledinto Central Asia. Lesser ranges

farther east bordered today's Af-ghanistan and Pakistan. Midwestreared the Zagros Mountains,looming over a western plain.

The mountain rivers andstreams were the source ofthe wa-ter that nourished the high vallevsand the oases of the arid interiorand, when spread over the fieldsby irrigation, made it possible forfarmers to till the soil. From thesoaring peaks also came the rawmaterials that made Elam wealthy:

alabaster, carnelian, lapis

AshurbanipaVs brutal campaign againstElam is triumphantly recorded in thisrelieffrom his Nineveh palace showing thesack of an Elamite city in 647 BC.Here flames risefrom buildings as Assyri-an soldiers topple the city walls withpickaxes and crowbars and carry off thespoils. Their skill in close-quarter fightingenabled the Assyrians to easily over-whelm the Elamites, who were too depen-dent on bows and arrowsfor defense.

French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan'sexcavations of the Susa acropolis were

in full swing when Jules-Georges Bon-doux, a French artist traveling throughPersia in 1905, made his sketches for thispainting of the mound that held the re-mains of the city. The 15-foot-high work

showing some 20th-century wear andtearcaptures the pastoral timelessness ofwading herons but reveals little of the ar-chaeological drama unfolding in Susa 'sshadowed mound. The ancient and illus-trious city lasted some 5,000 years under asuccession ofpeoplesElamites, Achaeme-nids, Seleucids, Parthians, and Muslimsbefore it was finally destroyed by the Mon-gols in the 13th century AD.

lazuli, timber, copper, lead, gold, silver, and iron. In the highlandfolds nestled isolated, fertile valleys, rich in their diversity. Andthrough the passes came peoples who, bringing goods and ideas fromelsewhere, helped shape Elamite culture.

In the 3,500-year history that Susa

.shared with Mesopotamia, theElamite capital had fallen and risen more than once. It would riseagain, when Ashurbanipal himselfwas dust and his own royal citieshad been sacked by his enemies, among them the powers now de-veloping in the land known today as Iran. The name, Iran, means"land ofthe Aryan" and refers to the Indo-Europeans, or the Aryans,who began migrating into it around 1000 BC. Almost three millen-nia later Europeans would still refer to much of this region as Persia,a word derived from the province, east of the Persian Gulf, where a

group of Indo-Europeans had settledcalled Persis by the Greeks.From here this relatively unknown people would launch a series ofbrilliant campaigns that would make Iran the center ofan empire big-ger and more powerful than any the world had yet seen.

Within little more than a century after Ashurbanipal's assault,Susa became the glowing city described in the Bible, whose monu-mental buildings were furnished with "marble pillars and also couch-es of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble,mother of pearl, and precious stones." Indeed the Persian king Da-rius I, who rebuilt Susa around 518 BC, took care to record that hehad adorned Susa with gold from Sardis and Bactria, ivory fromEgypt and Ethiopia, and wood from Lebanonthe booty and trib-ute that came to him as the omnipotent ruler of the Persian empire.

At their height, the Persians controlled nearly two million

square miles of territory spreading from Egypt and the Aegean wellinto India, and from the Persian Gulf to beyond the Black and Caspi-an Seas. Among their subjectsas evidenced by carved processionsseen on its palace facadeswere Elamites, Assyrians from Mesopo-tamia, Ionians and Lydians from Asia Minor, Egyptians and Kushitesfrom Africa, Scythians from the windy Russian Steppe beyond theBlack Sea, Armenians from the north, and Bactrians and Indiansfrom the east. The subject peoples' annual payments of gems, met-als, spices, fabrics, foodstuffs, animals, and slaves brought in revenuesestimated by Herodotus to be worth, at the market value of thosetimes, almost one million pounds of silver.

Rich, ably administered, and highly cultivated, this remark-able empire was governed by a line of kings named after a presumedancestor, Achaemenes, who may have ruled the Persians in the earlyseventh century BC. These Achaemenid monarchs, Cyrus and hissuccessors, were men of legendary prowess who issued their decreesfrom splendid capitals: Susa and Babylon in the lowlands, seven-walled Ecbatana in the mountains, and on the high plains, Pasargadaeand Persepolis. But after more than 200 years, in the fourth centuryBC, the Achaemenids fell to a conqueror whose stature equaled theirown, Alexander the Great, the young warrior-king of Macedonia.Their lands then formed the main part of his even larger empire.

Although Alexander's immense domain broke up swiftly afterhis early death, the core of the territory once under Persian sway sur-vived under one dynasty or another, its lands now growing, nowshrinking, for almost 1,000 years. The empire's Persian foundation

10

became overlaid with Greek ideals and Greek culture: first under therule of Alexander's immediate successors, the Seleucids, from 311 to141 BC; then under the Parthians, a nomadic people originally fromCentral Asia, who around 275 BC had migrated into Parthia, theprovince that lay southeast of the Caspian Sea, and who eventuallyseized control of the empire. The Parthian dynasty would be fol-lowed in AD 224 by a line of monarchs descended from an Iranianancestor named Sasan. The power of the Sassanians was matchedonly by that of Rome, of Constantinople, Rome's successor in theEast, and of faraway China. The Sassanians fell at last to the Arabarmies of Islam, in AD 637, and disappeared from history's stage.

M emories of Persia did not van-ish, however, from the realmsof the imagination. The Arab conquerors of the region absorbedtheir Sassanian predecessors' arts and institutions, and even in Eu-rope the books of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and of classi-cal historians, such as Herodotus and Xenophon, preserved the im-age of the lost world. It was an exotic picture of strange gods andcults, of terrifying excesses and vanished grandeurs, and it had enor-mous appeal. As early as the 12th century AD, a brave traveler fromthe West roved as far as Susa; by the 14th century, other Europeanshad seen the gaunt columns of ruined Persepolis, the capital of theAchaemenid empire, towering on the Persian plain. This view seemedto represent a bygone barbaric glory. Tales taken back to Europe byvisitors caught the public imagination and inspired works as differentas English poet Christopher Marlowe's tragedy of 1587, Tamlmrlaincthe Great, and composer George Frideric Handel's farcical operaXerxes, first performed in 1738. By the 18th century, more and more

Europeans were venturing to Iran, returning with glowing accounts

of the ruins, and with copies of mystifying inscriptions at Persepolis

and elsewhere, for generations of scholars to pore over.It was a new imperial age, however, that provided the oppor-

tunity for the most significant discoveries in Iran. By the beginning

of the 19th century, Western powers had enough commercial inter-

ests in the Middle and Far East to send representatives to Iraq, then

controlled by the moribund Ottoman Empire. These diplomats, a re-markable breed of scholars, began the archaeological a\k\ Linguistic

work that led to the uncovering of the ancient city-states of Mesopotamia, and to the translation of their long-forgotten languages.

II

The rich Mesopotamian records enticed scholars eastwardinto Iran, not only to Persepolis but also to the thousands of tepes,

mounds concealing ancient ruins, that lay scattered throughout thevast landscape. There they found the precious remains of formersplendors: cities crowded with palaces, temples, and monumentalsculpture; writings that revealed the existence of kingdoms reachingfar back in time; ornaments, armor, jewelry, and regalia that had beenwrought in gold and silver.

The early explorer-archaeologists were also participants in in-ternational intrigue, caught up in an unseemly race among Europeannations for the artifacts ofantiquity. They were intrepid, and they hadto be. Iran was rugged, daunting terrain. Much of it is high country,at least 1,500 feet above sea level, stretching from the Caspian Sea inthe north to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman in the south.The archaeologists going there tended to work in places inaccessibleexcept by the most perilous of tracks. Some areas were rife with dis-ease, such as malaria. The countryside harbored bandits and mur-derous, nomadic tribes. Even ordinary Iranians, shepherds or farm-ers as in ancient times, often harassed the Westerners, whom they sawas unclean infidels. One British report complained that "they refusedto sell corn [grain] or sheep to our party; they abused our servantswhenever they met; and they kept themselves as far as possible fromthe contaminating and dreaded influence of the hateful foreigners."

S:usa became one of the archaeol-ogists' first targets for investiga-

tion in Iran. It was already thousands of years old when the Persianscame to power in the sixth century BC. Their leader, the first Per-sian king, Cyrus, had acknowledged its long, proud Elamite her-itage by assuming an Elamite royal title, thus conferring uponhimself a noble connection to the past.

While the explorers knew that Elam was an impor-tant province of the Persian empire, they had yet to uncov-er evidence proving just how old Elamand Susaactu-ally were. The first to probe the city's ruins was anEnglishman named William Kennett Loftus, who arrivedin Baghdad in 1849 to serve on the Turco-Persian BoundaryCommission, set up by England and Russia to resolve territo-rial disputes between Iran and the Ottoman Empire, lands that

empire-building nations considered to lie within their

THE ORPHANEDSTRAYS

O F LURISTAN

In the late 1920s, bronze horsetrappings, weapons, votiveobjects, and ornaments beganappearing on the internation-al art market in growing num-bers. They were being lootedfrom the cemeteries of an ap-parently seminomadic horse-breeding people who flourishedduring the first millennium BCin the upland valleys of theZagros Mountains, a regionknown as Luristan.

By the mid-1930s, archaeol-ogists such as Erich Schmidtwere flying reconnaissanceflights over the isolated, ruggedheart of Luristan in search ofruins and unopened graves. In1938, a ninth-century-BC tem-ple site at Surkh Dum yieldedhundreds of objects buried inthe walls and floors, includingthe cache of bronze pins withstamped disks seen at right,above. But since Schmidt'sfindings would remain unpub-

lished for another 50 years, itwould be the digging and stud-ies ofBelgian archaeologistLouis vanden Berghe that at lastprovided a stylistic frameworkfor identifying the thousands of"orphaned strays" lying in mu-seums, private collections, anddealers' shops.

Bronze experts like OscarWhite Muscarella, at NewYork's Metropolitan MuseumofArt, have used vandenBerghe's research to help au-thenticate Luristan pieces. Heexamined the 5'/2-inch-longpinhead at left, which bore astrong resemblance to a pin re-covered at Surkh Dum. Helooked for simulated corrosionand patina and for other tell-tale signs indicating that it

might have been cast from anoriginal. He then subjected it tometallographic analysis to de-termine if the piece was ancientor modern. The pinhead, hap-pily enough, passed the tests.

spheres of national interest. Loftus wasa son of his age, confident in his au-thority as an English officer, a geologist

in an era when that science was begin-ning to change the picture of theearth's history. He was also an archae-ologist, sportsman, and adventurer,and the liveliest of observers of theworld around him. He was soon sentby the commission chief, another an-tiquity enthusiast, to identify, map, andexcavate Susa.

Loftus set off, after targeting

Susa's location based on the books ofGenesis, Ezra, Esther, and Daniel in the Old Testament. He alsoknew the works of the first-century Jewish historian Josephus and ofBenjamin of Tudela, who had traveled to Susa in the 12th centuryAD and described the tomb alleged to be that of the prophet Daniel,which remained a place of pilgrimage even in Loftus's day. And hewas familiar with the recently deciphered cuneiform texts.

As Loftus traveled to Susa, by horse and ferry, he recorded allthat he saw. Describing the plain he crossed, he observed the lions,

wolves, boars, and jackals that populated it. He noted the groves ofdates, oranges, and lemons, forests of tamarisk and poplar trees, andfields of rice, indigo, and barley. Once on site, he endured months ofhigh winds and oftemperatures that often rose to 120 F., forcing theinhabitants to shelter by day in rooms cut into the earth beneath their

houses until they emerged at dusk to sleep outdoors on their flatroofs. He concurred with the view of the first-century Greek geog-rapher Strabo, who commented that Iran was so hot that lizards andsnakes could not cross the road for fear of frying. And he enjoyed thedelicious relief of the spring season near Susa, where annually therain-watered land became covered with flowers so beautiful thatsome people thought die biblical name for the city, Shushanmean-

ing lilies in Hebrewmust derive from them.Loftus approached his destination with mounting excitement.

From 30 miles away he could see four major mounds, the largest ofwhich covered 60 acres and towered 70 feet. As he drew close, he saw

the ruins, still visible above ground, of the apadana, the great

columned hall where Persian kings had received the tribute ofem-

13

pire. It was there he began excavating, once he had mapped the site,and came upon fragments of civilizations older still. These includeda section of an obelisk bearing 33 lines of cuneiform script, a wall ofinscribed bricks, 200 small terra-cotta statues, mainly nude represen-tations of a goddess, and various clay models of animals. The in-scribed bricks and the obelisk, Loftus said, were "undoubted proofsof the remote antiquity ascribable to the great Susian citadel." Al-though he believed there was more to find, Loftus ran out of fundsand had to depart, taking with him the artifacts he had discovered,to be preserved in the British Museum.

The French, eager to exploit sites of their own, kept a watch-ful eye on British work in the region. In 1884, with the modest back-ing of their government, a husband-and-wife team came to excavateat Susa, the first in a long line of French scholars who would even-tually dig there. They were Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy, a soldier, en-gineer, and historian of architecture, and his wife, Jane.

The Dieulafoys lived at Susa for two years. Marcel-Augusteproduced an imaginative plan reconstructing Achaemenid forts andpalaces; he also shipped numerous artifacts to the Louvre, includingan enormous bull's head capital from one of the apadana's fallencolumns. Jane took back to France the inspiration for several nov-elsamong them Parysatis, based on the life of the mother of CyrusIIand material for two vivacious journals, An Amazon in the Ori-

Rifles at the ready, French writer andphotographerJane Dieulafoy rests in therough open terrain around Susa in this1886 photograph. During the two years sheand her archaeologist husband, Marcel-Auguste, spent excavating the palace ofDarius, they were ever wary of maraud-ing tribes. Many ofJane's photographswere later turned into engravings, such asthe one at right in which workers crate theDieulafoys' Achaemenid finds for trans-port to Paris. The couple's contributions

greatly enriched the Louvre's Middle East-ern antiquities collection, which nownumbers about 30,000 pieces.

14

ent and On an Expedition to the Home of the Immortals. In theseworks she expressed the sense offallen majesty that had overwhelmedher at Susa. The very ground under her feet, she wrote, was com-posed of the dust of ancient monarchies. She also excoriated the less-than-generous monetary backing provided by the parsimoniousFrench government.

Between them, Marcel-Auguste and Jane Dieulafoy helpedinspire support for French archaeological interests in Iran. In 1895the French ambassador at Tehran persuaded Shah Nasir al-Din togrant France the monopoly for archaeological excavation through-out his country, and by 1897, the French government had created thewell-funded Delegation Scientiflque Francaise en Perse. In practice,

the French stuck mainly to Susa, and the shah's successor agreed in1900 that every artifact excavated in the alluvial plains region ofwest-ern Iran, known as Susiana, would go to France, \x\xh a stipulatedcompensation to be paid for the gold and silver items.

The agreement and theway the first excavations were con-

ducted have been matters of con-troversy from that day to this. Ira-nians who lived near theexcavations proved hostile, andpillaging tribes were so aggressive

that the first teams at Susa used

some of the ancient bricks andstones at the site to construct, for

defense, a casdelike fortification

known as the Chateau. British ar-chaeologist John Curtis called it

"the most sumptuous dig house

ever constructed." Many archae-ologists later expressed outrage,

among them Iranians who werenaturally offended at being unable to excavate in their own country.

One Iranian archaeologist, Fzat Negahban, has ascribed the agree-ment to the "political and economic confusion of the country and

the naivete of the Iranian government."

Perhaps because of the monopoly granted France

The director was scorned as atreasure hunter who ravaged sitesto acquire artifacts for museums.

In this he was hardly alone. It is es-

timated that Morgan and his suc-cessors had provided the Louvrewith thousands of Elamite art-

works, as British archaeologists

had the British Museum.Morgan, however, had ap-

proached the project with impres-sive credentials. An accomplishedmining engineer with a deep lovefor prehistory, he had worked inthe Caucasus, in northern Persia,

and with great distinction inEgypt, when, at the age of 40, hewas made head of the French Ar-chaeological Delegation. For the

dig at Susa, he hired a strong team

of archaeologists and engineersand set out to uncover the originsof a civilization.

Morgan was handicappedby having little understanding ofthe architecture ofthe ancient Mid-dle East and scant knowledge of modern archaeological principles.The houses, palaces, and temples of this ancient world were builtfrom bricks that were mixtures of clay, water, and straw, molded inwooden forms, and dried in the hot sun. Such buildings could easi-ly be demolished in the course of a war, flood, or earthquake; buttheir impermanency also meant that people had only to flatten outthe old structures to provide a platform on which to construct newedifices or even a city. Thus each town rested on its predecessor, andover the years the many layers came to form the high tepes of Iran.

Today the various occupation levels of the tepes are a majorsource of archaeological knowledge about the life of the people whoonce inhabited the sites. The aim of modern archaeology, of course,is not simply to recover artifacts but to understand them in theircontext. This requires careful planning and slow, painstaking workto distinguish the different strata from one another. After his initial

Ensconced in his tapestried study at Susa,

Jacques de Morgan looks every bit theproper scholar. The photograph was takeninside the French Archaeological Delega-tion's headquarters, whose construction he

oversaw in the 1890s. Assembledfrom re-cycled Elamite and Achaemenid remains,the fortresslike building, dubbed theChateau, saved the archaeologistsfrom thephysical discomfort and anxiety experi-enced by the Dieulafoys 15 years earliei:

In the foreground of the picture at rightruns a portion of Morgan's 300-foot-long

"grand trench," which cut a wide swathinto Susa's acropolis; in the background isthe medieval-looking Chateau.

16

explorations at Susa, Morgan decided, much too quickly, that suchanalysis was impossible. He had anticipated rinding at least one largebuilding that would be in good enough shape for the ground planto be studied. Instead, as he observed in his writings, "I soon real-

ized that everything was in the greatest disorder and that the signif-icant objects, however large, were sparsely distributed among a greatdeal of rubble."

The Frenchman therefore formed what one commentatorcalls a "frightening" plan for the fastest, cheapest way to remove the

most amount of earth from the main, 115 -foot- high mound at Susa.Because he was unable to differentiate the various strata, lie divided

the mound horizontally into seven 16-foot-deep levels. 1 le said he se-lected that depth because experience had shown him that when earthwas thrown into wagons from a height of 16 feet, the objects hiddenin it "would not suffer," a remark that makes contemporary archae-ologists shudder. To dig through these layers quickly, he hired 1,200

17

Almost a foot tall and capable of hold-ing a gallon of liquid, this 6,000-year-old

painted vase is considered a masterpiece

ofprehistoric Iranian pottery, renowned

for being decorated with beautifully styl-

ized animals. Thousands ofpieces likethis one were found by Morgan in theburials of the acropolis cemetery at Susa.

Rendered at the site, his sketch (at right,below) illustrates how such bowls andbeakers were placed beside the dead.

workmen, far too many for him to supervise effectively or to be ableto record the positions of the artifacts uncovered. Irretrievably lostwere many of the details that would have provided a chronology ofthe city's ancient history. Only later, after World War II, when Susawas reexcavated, could a stab be made at assembling such a chronol-ogy, with results that were incomplete because of the earlier damagedone to the site by Morgan.

What Morgan's haste gave him was a glimpse beneath theAchaemenid city into an older world. He found the elaborate tem-

ples of the Elamite kings; tablets covered withthe writing known as Proto-Elamite, which wasused in the period from 3300 to 2600 BC; anda massive prehistoric cemetery filled with beau-tifully crafted ceramics. When he left Susa in1908, exhausted and dispirited by attacks on hiswork, his assistant, another mining engineer

I V v

named Roland de Mccqucnem, took over the excavation's direction.In 1927, Iran terminated the monopoly agreement with

France. The French continued their digging but were now joined byarchaeological teams from many nations. This intensification of ef-fort led to discoveries at Elamite sites and at the fringes of Flam, re-vealing a society that, by the time of the Achaemenids, had alreadybeen in existence for thousands of years.

E lam's geography gave rise to a'culture shaped by two forces.The lowland settlements, such as Susa, were heavily influenced by theurban lifestyle of the bordering Mesopotamian cities. These centersoflearning and religion had, for millennia, been making strides in thedevelopment of trade, diplomacy, and civic institutions, andMesopotamian ideas were imposed upon or copied by surroundingsettlements. But Elam also felt the impact of the more isolated high-land peoples of the mountains to the north and east of Susa, who de-veloped independently.

These diverse regions of lowland and mountain were inhab-ited from earliest times. By 7000 BC, village settlements had devel-oped in both environments, with houses constructed of sun-bakedbricks, some of which still bear the fingerprints of their makers. Thevillagers began to work with raw copper, first by hammering it, thenby smelting the ore and casting the metal. And they learned to makepottery. At first their vessels were fashioned by hand and dried in thesun. Soon they discovered how to fire the clay in a kiln so the vesselswould be harder and riius better able to hold liquids. The earliest dec-orated pottery had crude geometric designs incised or painted withliquid clay. Some scholars think these patterns echo the weaves of bas-kets that the pottery may have replaced as receptacles. The cerami-cists later learned to shape their wares on a wheel and the decoration

evolved into designs of astonishing sophistication. Such vessels have

been found at a number of prehistoric sites, indicating the widespreaddiffusion of this pottery style and suggesting fruitful contact amongthe early inhabitants of the region.

Sometime around 4500 BC, a small settlement took shape ontwin hills by the Shaur River. This was the start ofSusa. On one hill,known as the acropolis, a brick platform, measuring approximately262 feet long, 213 feet wide, and 31 feet high from its base, was put

up. Probably towering nearly 60 feet over the surrounding plain, it

19

For almost 3,500 years, the roof of Tepti-

ahar's baked-brick tomb (right) lay intact;but in 1965, roadwork unwittingly de-stroyed part of the structure. The 11-inch-

tall clay head below, found in an artists'workshop strewn with shells, gold, sawedelephant bones, bronze tools, mosaic frag-ments, and bowls of dried pigments maybe a funerary portrait of the king. Thehead had been modeled, polished, painted,and inlaid, and a hole had been drilledin the base, probablyfor mounting.

1

must have been visible for miles. There is evidence thata temple once stood upon it. But these structures wereeventually destroyed, apparently by raiders. Aroundthe time of this devastation, at least 1,000 men,women, and children were laid to rest at the base ofthe platform. Their remains were closely stacked,one on top of another, in a small area. Some bod-ies were missing parts. Many seemed to have beeninterred simultaneously.

Several archaeologists believe that these indi-

viduals died over a period oftime and that their bod-ies were deposited first in a charnel house; then, whenthe flesh had rotted away, what was left of them wasburied. But others think these people all died at the

same time

perhaps in the sack ofSusa, or in a famineor plagueand were consigned to a common graveby their survivors. Interred with some of the deadwere such grave goods as axlike instruments of ham-mered copper; copper disks, some pierced, perhapsmeant to be suspended from the neck; and clay bowls,cups, and beakers, with exquisitely painted decorations

showing animals native to the area around Susa.In the fourth millennium BC the great cities of Mes-

opotamia arose to the west ofSusa. As these became rich andstrong, they looked eastward to the treasures of Iran's moun-tains. Susa was the gateway to this wealth. At the beginningof the Proto-Elamite Period, around 3300 BC, the influence

20

Skeletonsform a neat line in a crudelybuilt sepulcher adjacent to the tombof Tepti-ahar. The Iranian archaeologistEzat Negahban believes that they represent14 members of the monarch's eternalguard, perhaps servants and wives sacri-ficed upon his death. Here the bodies

were arranged in a row with faces to thenorth. Another nine skeletons lay helter-skelter atop the victims' leg bones. Un-like the king's tomb, which contained anadditional 21 human sacrifices, thisburial chamber had no door; once the bod-ies were placed inside, a rough barrier ofbaked bricks was put up to seal them in.

of the Mesopotamian city of Uruk was felt there. Because the fewwritten records that exist from this time are still undeciphercd, it isnot clear whether people from Uruk actually lived in Susa, but theplain, mass-produced pottery of the period is very similar to that ofUruk. In addition, the Susians' engraved cylinder seals, stamped onclay to establish ownership, have similar images, carved in the same

style as those found in Uruk.With the growing exchange of ideas and trade, there emerged

a whole new form of communicationwriting. Early excavations atSusa yielded tiny clay and stone tokens. Their differing shapes arethought by archaeologists to indicate various items, such as grain,sheep, or jars of oil, which were being bartered. These were some-

times enclosed in hollow clay envelopes knownas bullae, which were often impressed withmarkings identical to the tokens they concealed,thus showing at a glance the amount and type ofthe goods in a transaction. In cases where thenecessary information was found on the bullae,the purpose of the tokens is thought to be to

provide a means of quickly impressing this data

on plain clay tablets. Out of the clay accountingtablets that evolved from this basic bookkeepingeffort came a rudimentary cuneiform that in-

cluded some characters from Uruk's own ver-

sion of the wedge-shaped script, yet that overallwas quite distinct from UrukY Scholars identi-fy the language in which the early, still untrans-lated Susian inscriptions were written as Proto-

Elamite, a precursor of Elamite. Surprisingly,

this tongue does not fall into either the Indo-

European or Semitic linguistic families, and has

no known descendants.While Proto-Elamite has not been deci-

phered, it crops up over a wide area as archaeo-

logical digs have shown, indicating a commercial

network that included Susa and extended tar

into the Iranian highlands. Earl) tablets have

been excavated in towns along the trade routes

as tar away as Godin Tepe, 170 miles to thenorth; Anshan, 320 miles to the southeast;

21

Shahr-i Sokhte, 450 miles east of Anshan, near Zahedan on theAfghanistan-Iran border; and Shahdad, at the edge of the Dasht-i-Lut desert, where more such writings have been found.

Anshan is perhaps the most interesting of these sites. As acenter of power in its own right, it would share in the leadership ofElam, many of whose rulers styled themselves King of Anshan andSusa. (Later the Achaemenid monarchs would also use this presti-gious tide.) The location of Anshan remained unknown until 1970,when American archaeologist John Hansman, after examining vari-ous archaeological, textual, and linguistic references, proposed thatthe mounds at Tal-i-Malyan, a wide fertile valley in the ZagrosMountains, might conceal the ruins ofdie city. A University ofPenn-sylvania team, led by American archaeologist William Sumner, exca-vated there in the 1970s and unearthed portions of a Proto-Elamitesettlement whose massive defense walls protected well-built rectan-gular houses of mud brick, and workshops complete with fireplacesand ovens. Bronzesmiths and potters had worked in the city, whichhad also housed merchants and farmers. Geometric designs in red,yellow, black, and white paint decorated the plastered walls of therooms of buildings. Proof that this was indeed Anshan came whenthe archaeologists' trowels turned up bricks with the city's nameclearly inscribed on them.

Anshan had been established around 3000 BC, perhaps bytraders from Susa, who may have used it as a transfer point for ship-ping the copper and semiprecious stones of the eastern mountains tothe population centers of Elam and Mesopotamia. Watered by theKur River and surrounded by vineyards and fields of wheat, barley,grapes, and lentils, by stands ofoak, juniper, poplar, almond, and pis-tachio, and by small satellite villages, Anshan grew swiftly. Within afew hundred years it was five times the size of Susa. Although its for-tunes seem to have risen and fallen in the shadowy centuries that fol-lowed, its establishment was an early step in the alliance of principal-ities that would become Elam. Besides Susa and Anshan to the southand east, the Elamite kingdom would include Awan to the northwestand the province of Simash to the northeast, in the valleys of theLuristan Mountains.

In the following centuries, known as the Old Elamite Period(2600 to 1500 BC), Susa and Elam entered the historical archives ofthe Mesopotamians, the enemies of the Elamites. As writing devel-oped in Mesopotamian cities, narratives began to be set down in clay,

For centuries, the ziggurat ofKing Un-tash Napirisha was known by the locals asChogha Zanbil, or "basket mound," be-cause it resembled an upside-down basket(below, right). Once excavation began onthe 250-acre complex, hundreds of inscrip-tions proclaiming the king's name begancoming to light. Also uncovered werehand-tooled, white and opaque blue orblack glass rods (below) that, set diagonal-ly into panels, decorated the ziggurat's

wooden doors. Though no longer the capi-tal of Elam, the city thrived until Ashur-banipaVs savage attack left it in ruins.

22

including historical epics that claimed victories after bloody battleswith Elam. Some of these accounts may be exaggerations or fictions,but they indicate that Elamite and Mesopotamia]! kings waged sporadic wars against one another over a long period. More convincingare the claims of a clay prism known as the Sumerian King List, firstcompiled around 2100 BC, long after most of the events noted hadoccurred. It outlines a history of repeated Mesopotamia!! triumphsover such various Elamite centers as Awan, Anshan, and Susa. Final-ly around 2300 BC, the armies of Mesopotamia, under the leader-ship of the city-state of Akkad, conquered Susa and absorbed it intoa newly forming empire; this event was reflected in Susian sculptures,pottery, and records, inscribed in both the Akkadian and Elamite lan-guages. The city seems to have become a staging point for the Akka-dian kings' excursions farther east, a place where their charioteers Andinfantry could retire during the winter before resuming their offen-sives in the spring.

When the Akkadian empire collapsed about 2150 BC, King

23

Found in 1903 in the temple ofNinhur-sag at Susa, this 14th-century-BC statue ofQueen Napir-Asu is a high point ofElamite metalwork. Napir-Asu's dressand even herfingernails have been care-fully modeled. Using the lost-wax process,a copper shell was cast over a bronze core

and then probably covered withgold foil.TJje figure weighs 3,760 pounds.

Puzur-Inshushinak from the Elamite province of Awan, most likelyin the mountains of Luristan north of Susa, retook Susa, but it waslost again to a new dynasty rising in the Mesopotamian city of Ur.Eventually Ur too declined, and again it was highlanders, this timefrom Shimashki, a province probably in the mountains northeast ofSusa, who in 2004 BC took over the capital. According to laterMesopotamian lamentation poems, the rulers of Shimashki were

strong enough to attack Ur itself and to lead its king into cap-tivity. They also took away the statue of Ur's divine protec-tor, the goddess Ningal, a sacrilege remembered long after-ward in Mesopotamia.

The Shimashki gave way to another dynasty, about1900 BC, known as the Sukkalmah. Votive and building in-

scriptions, as well as legal documents, offer some informationabout this relatively long-lived line. By tradition, Shimashki's rulershad come to use a title derived from the Sumerian language:Sukkal Mah, or Grand Regent. The Sukkal Mah governed withboth a senior coregent (often his brother and heir, who borethe title of Sukkal of Elam and Shimashki) and a junior co-regent, the Sukkal of Susa, who might be the son or nephewof the grand regent himself and was also in line to succeedhim. This unusual system provided trained rulers; perhaps it

also reduced dynastic intrigue.Texts found at Susa indicate the growing power of

the emergent Elamite state. Its agricultural wealth, derived

from the irrigated farmland bordering Susa and the natu-rally watered high country, expanded. As records fromBabylon to Syria attest, the Elamites were active in tradeas well as in diplomacy and war. The triumvirate rule ofthe Sukkalmah dynasty continued, although no informa-tion survives about the last two centuries of their gov-ernance, except the names and titles of the rulers them-selves. Then something dire seems to have happened.Archaeological surveys suggest that outlying villages

near the cities were abandoned, and that the citiesgrew as the country people poured into them. Per-haps this was because of the decline in agricultural

productivity around Susa and Anshan. This wan-ing era would be followed by what scholars callthe Middle Elamite Period (1500 to 1000 BC).

Measuring almost two feet in length, thisbronze tableau lay embedded in the wallofan Elamite tomb, three feet below thetemple where the statue of Queen Napir-Asu (opposite) was found. A 12th-centuryinscription ofan Elamite king identifiesthe scene as a sun ritualthe only three-

dimensional example of worship inprogress in the ancient Middle East. Here,two priests with shaved heads kneel, sur-

rounded by miniature ziggurats, conicalpillars, jars, basins, altars, and trees. Sim-ilar structures and basins were uncoveredon the southeast, or sunrise, side of the cer-

emonial forecourt ofChogha Zanbil.

Despite the setback in its fortunes, Elam remained a force tobe reekoned with. In the 15th century BC, a monarch named Tepti-ahar controlled the kingdom. Almost nothing was known about thismonarch until the mid-1960s, when Iranian archaeologist Ezat Ne-gahban began excavations at Tepti-ahar's majestic ceremonial city atHaft Tepe, about nine miles south of Susa. Negahban first saw HaftTepe's 14 high mounds, "the majesty ofthe site in the light and shad-ow of the late-afternoon sun," as he put it, when he was a young stu-dent taking the train home to Ahwaz from the University ofTehran.Nineteen years later, in 1965, workers bulldozing the site for a sugar-cane plantation noticed part of a baked-brick wall and reported it.Word reached the Archaeological Service of Iran, and before long,Negahban had assembled a team and begun the Haft Tepe excava-tions (pages 20-21), which would continue until 1979, when the Ira-nian revolution brought work to a halt.

What Negahban found were the ruins of a series of magnifi-cent buildings. Erected in the mid-15th century BC of brick held inplace by gypsum mortar, the structureswhich included halls,courts, kitchens, and workshopswere decorated with paint andplaster. Inside a walled temple-and-tomb complex more than 230feet long and 98 feet wide was a huge central court that had a longportico at its northern end, behind which rose two temple halls, eachleading to a tomb. In the court stood a stele inscribed in Akkadian,the language that, because of the influence of Mesopotamia and thegeneral use of the Mesopotamian cuneiform script, had become thelingua franca of the Middle East. The monumental stone announced

PRESERVATION'S GOAL: SAVE WHATREMAINS OR SHOW WHAT ONCE WAS?At the root ofevery archaeolo-gist's search lies a passion toknow what the found objectlooked like when new. This de-sire has often been keen enoughto fuel efforts not only to pre-serve artifacts but to return themto their original appearance. Thetrio of terra-cotta panels below,12th-century-BC decorationsfrom the wall surrounding theTemple ofInshushinak at Susa,are examples. Each consists of 14stacked bricks. Before putting thepanels on display in 1930, restor-

ers filled in chips, substituted

plaster copies for missing bricks,and carefully painted each newpieceall in the hope of recap-turing the impression the workmade on viewers more than3,000 years ago.

The panels constitute only afraction of a collection of bricksfrom the wall taken to Paris aftertheir discovery in Persia between

After more than six decades, the figuresin this 1928 restoration ofpanelsfromthe Temple ofInshushinak at Susaa

bull-man, a palm tree, and a goddessappear almost new. Because the excava-tors were not able to locate the top two

bricks of the goddess and herface wasbadly damaged, the restorers reworkedherfeatures andgave her a new head-

dress made ofplaster (upper right).

1912 and 1924. Most were placeduntouched in storage, wherethey sat for six decades. Duringthat time, the role of the art re-storer changed dramatically.Humbled by the knowledge thatfuture archaeological discoveries

and technological advancesmight render the most enlight-ened of reconstructions obsolete,conservators today try to showthe object as it really is.

So in 1990, when it was de-cided to reassemble three addi-

I

\

tional panels from the templewall, the goal was not to improvethem but simply to show whatremained of them. "When wefound fissures," the project di-rector, Brigitte Bourgeois, ex-plained, "flaws that were due tothe manufacturing techniques ofdie ancientstheir way ofdryingor baking the bricks, their way ofmixing clay with chopped grassthen we left them as such."The result of conservators' ef-forts is seen at far right, below.

Conservators use a microscope to identify

minerals, traces of mortar, bitumen dec-oration, and other deposits on bricks thathad been storedfor more than 60 years.Such close examination also revealed thefingerprints of the artisans who firstmolded the bricks 3,000 years ago.

A sculptorfashions a new headdressforthe goddess seen at left. Even after fir-ing, the clay would have been easy to tellfrom the old. Yet in 1990, as shown atright, conservators of the similar, second

workunlike their 1928 counterparts

chose not to replace the missing part.

To accommodate future transport, aswell as expected revisions and discoveries,

the bricks in the 1991 reconstruction

(right) were notfused permanently, but

mounted on a metalframe. Conserva-tors strengthenedflaking bricks with syn-

thetic resins that are easily soluble, andthey did not rework or paint the blocks.

-'

> -'

M 1A

u

that in this place Tepti-ahar "built his tomb forhimself and his favorite girl servant, and next

to it he established a chapel and assigned to it

priests, servants, and guards to serve and pro-

tect his tomb." The stele specified the amountof money allotted to pay for upkeep, regularceremonies, and annual festivals.

And in fact when Negahban lifted the stoneslabs covering a door in the eastern temple, hefound a three-chambered tomb whose vaultedbrick roof had survived for almost 3,500 years. In-side lay skeletons on brick platforms, seven on

one, two on another, while a jumble of humanbones formed a heap on the floor near the en-try passage. It is likely that the second plat-

form indeed held the remains of Tepti-ahar

and his "favorite female servant"; the skel-etons on the other platform may havebeen the remains of aides sacrificed toserve him in the afterlife. The pile ofbones, Negahban thought, might have beenthose of sacrificed servants, or possibly wives. A tomb, adjacent tothat of the king, was also crammed with skeletons (page 21).

Even in death Tepti-ahar may have had females to wait onhim, according to Negahban. This suggestion is based on another ofTepti-ahar's documents, one whose provenance is uncertain. Its textreports that living women were locked into his vault at sundown towatch over him in the darkness. To prevent their stealing any of thetomb's now-vanished treasures, they had to wear tight dresses. Thatway, when they emerged each morning after their gruesome nightlystint, the temple priests could search them easily.

The many artifacts unearthed in the temples and workshopsofHaft Tepe offer glimpses ofthe people who once lived and workedthere. There are painted-clay statue heads with full, round faces,almond-shaped eyes, and braided hair, possibly portraits of the kingand the ladies of the court, as well as small, nude, broad-thighedfigures, sometimes identified as Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddessof love and war. Thousands of clay tablets, with their clay envelopes

intact, proved upon examination to be letters and other textsmarily with administrative matters. The tablets document

In 1904, French archaeologist Roland deMecquenem discovered a 12th-century-BCcache of votive objects deposited in the sa-

cred area ofSusa's acropolis; among theobjects were these two gold and silverfig-urines mounted on lumps of copper.Standing three inches high, they arealmost identical representations ofan

Elamite king at worship. One hand isheldforward in offering while the otherholds a goat, probably intended for sacri-

fice. Another treasure from the cache is the4 l/i-inch-long lapis lazuli dove at right,studded with gold pegs.

28

an active Elamite bureaucracy that exchanged emissaries with Baby-lonia, and they reveal that relations between the two kingdoms weredeteriorating during the reign of Tepti-ahar. Account tallies, schooltexts, and dictionaries also emerged from the earth to shed furtherlight on daily life.

Among some of the most fascinating finds are interpretationsof divination by examining sheeps' livers for omens, a widespreadpractice throughout the ancient Middle East. The meanings attrib-uted to these signs suggest the nature of royal anxieties: "If on thelower part of the naplastu [a section of the liver] a piece is missing,the God Sin will help my army," says one line; if this should be thecase on the right side, however, "problems will develop in my army."Worse, if the piece is missing in the upper part of the usurtu [anoth-er liver section], "fire will eat the main gate of my city."

For help in adversity, Elamites turned to a pantheon of deities.

In fact, Negahban has suggested that their own name for their coun-try, Hal-Tamti, may mean "Land of the Gods." Some of these di-vinities, such as Ishtar, had been imported from Mesopotamia; oth-ers were spirits of nature and vegetation, who manifested themselvesthroughout the ancient world. Among the latter was the ubiquitousMaster of Animals, a human-shaped figure shown conqueringdemons and wild beasts. There were also deities peculiar to Elam,such as Inshushinak, the patron god ofSusa who sat, as did other im-portant Elamite divinities, on a serpent throne, pouring out precious

water. Stone cylinder seals found at Haft Tepe bear engraved picturesof these gods, along with scenes of prayer, offering, and sacrifice.

Within a century of Tepti-ahar's reign, a new

line of kings, known as the Igi-halkid family af-ter an ancestor, were ruling Anshan and Susa.They and their successors, the Shutrukid dynasty,

would build capitals and ceremonial centers rival-ing those of Assyria and Babylon. The Igi-halkids'might would make them dangerous rivals; indeed,their depredations in Mesopotamia may in pan ex-plain the ferocity ofAshurbanipal's savage attack on

Susa centuries later.

A king named Untash-Napirisha, fifth oftheIgi-halkid line, who ruled Elam from about 1260 to

123S BC, possessed the land, resources, and admin-

istration to begin major building and renovation projects at Susa aswell as in towns and villages across the surrounding plain. His most

remarkable project involved the construction of a new city 25 milessoutheast of Susa. Untash-Napirisha may have intended it to replaceSusa as both the religious and political center of Elam. The city, Al-Untash-Napirisha, was originally to have been dedicated solely to In-

shushinak, patron god of Susa; but then, as building progressed, thededication was extended to include Napirisha, the chief Elamite god.

Some of the cuneiform inscriptions on the buildings are in Akkadi-an; others, however, are in Elamite. The ruins of Al-Untash-Napirisha lie at a place now called Chogha Zanbil, first spotted in themid-1930s by people doing aerial surveys for an oil company. From1936 to 1939, Roland de Mecquenemwho earlier had excavated atSusadug some exploratory trenches there. Major excavations ofthe 250-acre site were subsequently undertaken, between 1951 and1962, by French archaeologist Roman Ghirshman.

Of the palaces, tombs, temples, and workshops that Ghirsh-man explored at Chogha Zanbil, the central and most impressivestructure was a ziggurat (page 23) that must have rivaled those ofMesopotamia in its enormous size. Even in its ruined state it towered82 feet above the plain; in Untash-Napirisha's day it is believed tohave reared at least 170 feet.

The ziggurat was made up of a series of buildings, like enor-mous boxes nesting one inside the other. Piercing the 26-foot wallswere monumental doors that opened onto vaulted stairways guard-

baked clay griffins and bulls. The stairs led in turn to offer-rs. Originally there were five stories; on the uppermost

In an excavation tent at Tepe Marlik in1962, Ezat Negahban surveys a few of thepots, figurines, andgold bowlsfound in53 lavish and elaborate burials datingback more than 3,000 years. Camouflagedby lush vegetation, the cemetery remaineduntouched until the archaeologist and histeam stumbled on it. They were conduct-ing an archaeological survey of the re-gion, deemed necessary because of the ex-tensive illegal digging that wasgoing on.

30

Also found in many of the graves atTepe Marlik were these highly stylizedterra-cotta bull vessels. They were molded

after the herds of humpbacked cattlethat stillgraze in the region today. Tfjc

heads serve as pouring spouts.

one a now-vanished temple had stood. Of these, only three survive.Outside the ziggurat a walled precinct provided a setting for

public ceremonies. People entered through three gates leading to ahuge paved forecourt, lavishly decorated with bricks and tiles glazedin blue and green. Here, Ghirshman imagined, had been placed thethrones of Untash-Napirisha and his wife, Napir-Asu. When seatedon them, the king and queen would have faced long tables wherethey could watch sacrifices and ritual cleansings conducted in theopen air. Blood and libations drained from these altars into pits.

King Untash-Napirisha left behind evidence of how Elamiteculture blended highland and lowland religious beliefs with those ofMesopotamia. He had an 8 'A-foot commemorative sandstone stele

carved, which was first set up inthe sacred precinct at Al-Untash-

Napirisha, then transferred to

Susa, where it was discovered infive fragments during early excava-

tions from 1898 to 1909. On thestele, the king appears before a

god to petition for "a dynasty ofhappiness."" The deity, who sits ona throne that probably consisted

of a folded serpent, has one hu-

man and one animal ear, perhapsan Elamite mark of divini-ty. He is Napirisha, usual-ly depicted with flowing

waters and snakes. Below

is another image of theking, standing between the

priestess U-Tik, perhaps his

mother, and his queen, Napir-Asu. Underneath these figuresare Mesopotamian mermaid god-desses. A similar cluster of deitiesappears on one of the most mag-

nificent of the king's artifacts, a

bronze and copper statue of thequeen, about four feet high, dis-

covered by Morgan at Susa (page24). Inscribed on her fringed skirt is

a curse directed at anyone intending

to do harm to her effigy. The curse invokes four divinities: Napirisha, whosename means the "Great God," and who wasthe chief Elamite deity; his consort Kiririsha, de

scribed as the "Lady of life, who has dominion overthe sacred grove," and is the mother of the gods; Inshushinak, god of Susa; and Beltiya, meaning "My Lady" in Akkadian, away of addressing the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar.

Untash-Napirisha did not live to finish his city. Upon hisdeath Susa regained its supremacy. Sacred but almost deserted, thefabulous Al-Untash-Napirisha stood for more than 600 years until itfell, like Susa, to Ashurbanipal's sweep through Elam.

Despite his desire to complete the city named after him,Untash-Napirisha did not neglect Susa. He and those who immedi-ately succeeded him set in motion extravagant construction projectsthere for the honor of the gods and their own reigns, decorating thenew buildings with treasures that had been seized during variousconquests. Susa became a monument to the power of Elam, a city ofpalaces, temples, and sacred groves watered by an elaborate systemof cisterns and canals.

Fanned by her attendant, an elegantlycoiffed Elamite woman sits cross-legged ona lion-footed stool winding thread on aspindle while a meal offish awaits on atable. This five-inch fragment ofaneighth-century-BC relief was molded andcarvedfrom a mix of bitumen, groundcalcite, and quartz. The Elamites alsoused bitumen, a naturally occurringmineral pitch, or asphalt, for vessels, sculp-ture, glue, caulking, and waterproofing.

usa reached its apex under the'Shutrukid kings, who built, re-

built, and embellished its monuments with inscribed and decoratedbricks glazed in blue, green, and white, and ornamented with col-ored knobs and wall plaques. Glazed bas reliefs depicted human fig-ures and benevolent gods and goddesses wearing the horned crownsmd animal heads of the region's long tradition. The Elamite style

> emphasize both spaciousness and height: The houses of

32

Susa, for example, while laid out around courtyards according to thefashion of the Middle East, had unusually large audience halls or re-ception rooms, adorned at one or both ends with tall pilasters,columnlike structures that projected from the wall.

Susa's temples showed off the city's wealth. Among the ob-jects found by early excavators in the ruins were gold and silver stat-ues, small animal carvings of lapis lazuli and gold, and beads made ofagate, carnelian, and gold filigree (pages 28-29). Spoils of war fromMesopotamian cities such as Babylon, Sippar, Akkad, and Eshnunnafurther enriched Susa. One ofthe most outstanding was a seven-foot-high stele carved from black diorite and engraved with the legal codeof Hammurabi, the king of Babylonia. The Elamites probably seizedit from the Babylonian city of Sippar during an incursion into Mes-opotamia and carted it home.

Aggressive kings known as the Shutrukids supplied much ofthe booty that adorned Susa. They reigned in the 12th century BC,an era that provided ample opportunities for burgeoning ambitions.With the Babylonian and Assyrian empires to the west and northweakened by internal strife and dynastic battles, the Shutrukids, asrecorded in their own inscriptions as well as in Babylonian texts, raid-

ed, plundered, and destroyed. This brutal if lucrative activity reachedits peak in mid-century, under a king named Shilhak-Inshushinak,who conquered central Mesopotamia and penetrated north acrossthe Zagros Mountains into the heart of Assyria.

The Elamite incursions were bitterly remembered in thechronicles of towns taken and holy effigies purloined. Retaliationcame at the end of the 12th century BC, in a strike at Elam by theBabylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar I. This onslaught seems to havebeen decisive, at least according to the Babylonian account, whichstated bleakly, "The king of Elam disappeared permanently. " Whatin fact occurred is a mystery; no recorded references to Elam over thenext 300 years have so far come to light.

It is unlikely that Elam ceased to exist. The defeated Elamitesmay have suffered, as did the neighboring Mesopotamia^, fromcrop failures and repeated famines, which in turn incited political un-

rest. Further complicating the picture would have been militarythreats from the north and west. In northern Mesopotamia, Assyria

was gathering strength again, and at the northern end /agios

Mountains, the warrior-kings of Urartu were becoming more as-sertive. Farther east were the potentially dangerous Manneans, who

33

lived in the area now known as Kurdistan. And entering the regionfor the first time were waves of the Indo-European peoples knownas Aryans, who probably originated on the Steppe of southern Rus-sia. These tribes may have appeared in Iran as early as 1400 BC, al-though some think they arrived 500 years later. Gradually they es-tablished strongholds. One group settled on the northwest Iranianplateau, another in the southwest. Among them were the ancestorsof the Medes and the Persians.

Pressured from the north, west, and south and having lostcontrol of their Mesopotamian borders and the territory surround-ing Anshan, the Elamites, it is believed, retreated to the mountainsaround 1000 BC. Susa probably remained a political and ceremonialcenter, but when the story of the Elamites picks up again in writtenaccounts of the ninth century BC, the Elamite kings and armies ap-parendy have taken up residence in towns named Madaktu and Hi-dalu in the records.

During the period when the Elamites are missing from writ-ten accounts, other peoples come into focus, among them the orig-inators of a burnished, gray pottery called Early Western Gray Ware,that began to spread throughout Iran beginning around 1400 BC.Some scholars have attributed the introduction of this ceramic to theIndo-European newcomers. Examples have generally beenfound in the cemeteries of settlements, including one at TepeMarlik near the Caspian Sea. There, between 1961 and 1962,Negahban excavated 53 stone tombs, dating from about 1400to 1000 BC, and retrieved large bronze animal statuettes,bronze weapons, gold jewelry, cylinder seals, glass beakers,and gold, silver, and bronze vessels.

Other citadels have also yielded splendid treasures. In1947 local shepherds climbing a hill in Kurdistan, once theland of the Manneans, stumbled upon a few gold artifacts andin their efforts to sell them attracted the attention of nearbyvillagers and dealers in antiquities. The result was the market-ing of a multitude of objects allegedly taken from this remotesite, now displayed in museums around the world. One of thechoicest is a gold breastplate decorated with mythical animalsand winged creatures, partly human, now in the Archaeologi-cal Museum of Tehran (pages 50-51). The French archaeolo-

Andre Godard, who studied the artifacts, believes that there dates to the end of the eighth century BC, when

JOY ANDDREAD ATH A S A N L U

It is an accepted feature of ar-chaeology that little, if any, ofthe emotion felt in the field evermakes its way into the final re-port. Yet to judge from the ex-periences ofAmerican and Ira-nian excavators at Hasanlu, an80-foot-high mound near LakeUrmia in northwestern Iran,digging at a site can evoke awide range of feelings.

The archaeologists startedwork in 1957 under the direc-tion of the University of Penn-sylvania archaeologist RobertH. Dyson Jr. They soon cameacross what he called the "dis-covery of a lifetime." Under alaver of charred debris in the ru-

34

ins ofone of five monumentalbuildings on the site, a workerfound human bones. As Dysonand his assistants brushed awaythe dirt, the glint of metalcaught their eye. "Thinking itwas a bracelet," Dyson recalled,"I brushed some more. Oureyes got bigger and bigger asthe sliver became a strip, andthen a sheet, and then a goldenbowl." Spirits were so high afterthe 1958 discovery that Dysonraised the crumpled vessel over-head in triumph (left). Then heand his team washed the bowl,filled it with wine, and drank atoast to their good fortune.

Further digging revealedweapons and silver, gold, andivory artifacts, indications that

the fire that consumed Hasanluspread too quickly for the at-tackers to loot it. But the spade-

work also brought to light evi-dence of a disaster: 246 skele-tons of men, women, children,and infants, more than half ofwhom had apparently beencrushed under collapsing walls

and roofs. Excavators found theremaining bodies in open areas.Possessing gruesome headwounds or severed limbs, theyapparently had been victims of abloody slaughter. "Not a fewarchaeologists who excavated atthe site," a scholar wrote, "were

emotionally affected by the car-nage and die human sufferingthat had taken place."

The skeleton ofa man, one of hundredsfound at Hasanlu, liesfacedown where hefell in a battle fought about 800 BC. Thebroken sword in his right hand identifieshim as a warrior, but experts cannot say ifhe was a defender or an attacker.

The gold cup below was so prized that atleast three people at ancient Hasanlu diedprotectingor stealingit. The scene shows a

storm godgoading a bull spewing water ontothe land and a boxer fighting a monster.

the Mannean stronghold was ravaged by Assyrian king Sargon II,

who turned upon his erstwhile Mannean allies and destroyed theircities. Others think the city fell to marauding Scythian horsemen inthe seventh century BC.

The most impressive ofthese Gray Ware sites, Hasanlu, sat onthe trade routes that linked Assyria, Urartu, and the Mannean lands.American archaeologist Robert H. Dyson Ir. began excavations atHasanlu in 1957 (pages 34-35), exposing what was left of its fortifica-tions and columned halls with spiral staircases, believed by somescholars to be temples. From its remains he reconstructed the city'sfiery end in about 800 BC, when Urartu sacked the city.

The great enemies ofUrartu, as ofmost Middle Eastern king-doms at this time, were Assyria's warrior-kings, who left their bloodyimprints on the history of every nation in the Middle East. One ofthe earliest mentions of the Elamite kingdom, after the 300-yearsilence, is a report in a Babylonian chronicle noting that in 814 BC,Elamite troops aided the Babylonians in a battle against the Assyri-ans. The reappearance of Elam in records occurs during the Neo-Elamite Period (743 to 500 BC), and is further attested to in Baby-lonian chronicles, Assyrian inscriptions, and ancient correspondence.

It was an age of constant warfare, with Assyria almost alwaysthe victor. In 689 BC, Babylon fell to Assyrian king Sennacherib,who, after plundering the city and slaughtering many of its citizens,stacked the corpses in the streets and burned the city to the ground.By 653, Sennacherib's grandson Ashurbanipal had killed Elam's lead-ers and placed client kings in the towns ofHidalu and Madaktu. Elamwas then torn by factions and revolts against its discredited monar-chy. Then in 647 came the infamous Assyrian invasion, when Ashur-banipal chased Humban-Haltash III, the reigning king, into the east-ern mountains, sacked Susa, and pillaged the countryside.

But the Assyrian yoke would be thrown off in 612 BC byan alliance of the Babylonians and the Medes. In the succeeding cen-tury of Neo-Babylonian hegemony the fragmented re-mains of Elam would take on new life and its capital newsplendor. The stage was set for the flowering of Persia.it

FLIGHT PATHS TO DISCOVERY

F-n 1935 Mary Helen Schmidt, a wealthy American,gave a gift to her German-born husband, archae-

L-ologist Erich F. Schmidt, director of three Iranianexpeditions. It was a Waco biplane, equipped with a220-horsepower engine. Dubbed Friend of Iran, thecraft was soon crisscrossing the country, as it would un-til 1938. Although a few sites in other nations had beenphotographed from the air, Schmidt's plane wouldleadas Mrs. Schmidt had hopedto the first large-scale, carefully planned aerial survey of ancient ruins.The regions under Schmidt's directionPersepolis

in the south, Rayy near Tehran in the north, and Luri-stan in the Zagros Mountainsranked at the top of hisaerial agenda. He made hundreds of dazzling,panoramic overviews with his camera, like the shotabove of Qasr-i Abu, a seventh-century-AD Sassaniancitadel in soudiern Iran. Such images helped pinpointareas for exploration. Commuting time was saved byflying between die three areas, and en route Schmidt

and his colleagues learned, in his words, to "see taster."Overhead photography was a challenge. Shooting

through a hole in the bottom of the plane proved in-adequate until a suspension mechanism was attached.It held the camera and a telescope diat showed thelandscape in crisp detail. Thanks to built-in leveling de-vices, both adjusted to a horizontal position that al-lowed the photographer to get the picture he wanted.While vertical views were essential for mapping, obliquephotos proved more useful for assessing the relativeheights of buildings, columns, and walls. The team alsofound that the spring and the moments after sunrise offered the best opportunities; the features of the terrainwere more sharply defined then than at other times.

Most important, the team was able to chart un-known territory for future excavation. It took a mere 13hours of flying to cover more than 400 ancient sites onthe plain of Persepolis, a task that, Schmidt figured,would have taken years on the ground.

Overhead photographs of Pcrsepolis, such as thisone, reveal the city's layout. The lower left quad-rant shows Schmidt's 1935-1936 excavation ofDarius I's capital. Fortifying walls enclose the"crumbs," as Schmidt put it, of magnificentpalaces set aflame by Alexander the Great in330 BC. Columns and ramparts, shot in early-morning light, cast long shadows that indicatetheir relative heights. The largest squarelike struc-

ture is the huge Apadana, or audience hall. Thesmaller one behind it is the Hall of 100 Columns,and the long, rectangular, roofed building toits side is dig headquarters. The rows of ringed dots

to the right of the city are wells ofa contemporary

irrigation system. Similar vertical shots of otherarchaeological sites made direct mapping of themby Schmidt and team quick, easy, and accurate.

1

i***

** I *

M

W ' >

Shotfrom an oblique angle at about 300 feet, thisimposing outcrop, called Naqsh-i-Rustam, nearPcrsepolis stands against the backdrop of Istakhr

Mountain. Cruciform, or crosslike, facades markthe entrances to the rock tombs of (left to right)

Darius II, Artaxerxes I, Darius I, and hidden inthe shadows, Xerxes I. The as-yet-unexcavated cube

(below) was raised by Darius I and may havebeen a Zoroastrian fire tower. This holy area, situ-

ated on a swell ofland in front of the cliffs, wasinvestigated by Schmidt's predecessor, Ernst

Herzfeld, who cut exploratory trenches along itsedge. Schmidt excavated the smaller rise at theentry to Darius's tomb, where he found an assort-ment ofSassanian silver coins and seals.

^^pHijMiMw

*&& K0 ' J?

The aesthetic potential of the oblique shot is realized

in a dramatic view of the mountain at Behistun

known to the ancients as Baga-stana, or "Place ofGod." Into its majestic face, more than 300feetabove ground level, Darius I ordered a reliefcarved in 520 BC, memorializing how he had pre-served the Persian empire by his triumph over ninerebel kings. Running along the base of the moun-tain was the Royal Road, which extended some1,600 miles; spaced at 18-mile intervalsthe

equivalent ofa day's walkwere innsfor the con-venience offoot-weary travelers.

w o

I AM CYRUS,KINGOF

THE WORLD

A gold plaque of thefifth orfourth cen-tury BC shows a manin Median dresscarrying a bundle ofsticks, perhaps foruse in a ritual. Be-

fore being conqueredby the Persians, the

Medes were the rul-ing force, with asphere of influence

that may have ex-tendedfrom easternTurkey to northernAfghanistan.

V^/ross>ssing the Murghab plain in330 BC, an army threaded its way along the flank of a steep, wood-ed gorge above the stream known today as the Pulvar. The troopswere under the command of the young Macedonian conquerorAlexander, who was pressing eastward, dreaming ofempire. They en-tered a broad, grassy valley. Half-hidden by a cluster of gnarled trees,they caught a glimpse of a structure that, for a solemn moment,would bring their impatient general to a halt.

Alexander had arrived at the site ofthe Persian capital of Pasar-gadae and had come upon the tomb of an earlier, celebrated worldconqueror, the Persian king Cyrus II, known as Cyrus the Great. Inhis day, Cyrus had founded an empire of unprecedented size andpower. Because Alexander hoped to surpass the Persian monarch'sachievements, he felt compelled to pause here and pay homage to hisacclaimed predecessor.

One of Alexander's comrades in arms, Aristobulus, gave anaccount of their visit to the tomb, which later found its way into thewritings of the first-century-BC Greek geographer Strabo. It was "atower of no great size," Aristobulus reported, "concealed beneath

the thicket of trees, in its lower parts massive, but its upper parts hav-

ing a roofand shrine with a very narrow entrance." The Macedonianscautiously entered the building, all of 200 years old at the time. They

47

found themselves in the royal burial chamber, where according toAristobulus, they beheld "a golden couch and table with drinkingcups, and a golden coffin."

There was also an inscription, cited "from memory," by Aris-

tobulus: "Oh man, I am Cyrus, who founded the empire of the Per-sians and was king of Asia. Grudge me not therefore this monu-ment." The Greek historian Plutarch, writing Alexander's biographyin the late first century AD, reported that as a mark ofrespect Alexan-der had ordered a Greek translation of the Persian text to be carvedalongside it. Plutarch also offered a somewhat more melodramaticversion of Cyrus's original text, which may have been taken from asource other than Aristobulus or embellished in its passage throughthe intervening centuries: "Oh man, whosoever thou art and fromwhencesoever thou comest (for that thou wilt come I know), I amCyrus, who founded the empire of the Persians. Grudge me not,therefore, this little earth that covers my body."

The inscriptions vanished; indeed, some scholars doubt thatthey existed. But the tomb remained to intrigue foreign travelers ofa much later age. An early-19th-century \isitor, Claudius James Rich,confessed that "the very venerable appearance of the ruin instantlyawed me. I found that I had no right conception of it. I sat for near-ly an hour on the steps, contemplating it until the moon rose on it,and I began to think that this in reality must be the tomb of the best,the most illustrious, and the most interesting of oriental sovereigns."

N;one of these superlatives cap-ture the personality or compe-tence of Cyrus, a leader of remarkable intelligence, strength, and vi-sion. He was a dynamic force in a turbulent age, the middle of thefirst millennium BC. He guided the transformation of the Persiansfrom an obscure ethnic group into the masters of an empire thatwould extend from the Indian Ocean to the Aegean Sea and rule thelives of such diverse, distant peoples as the Steppe dwellers of Cen-tral Asia, Nile fishermen, nomads of the Libyan desert, Hebrews,Greeks, Mesopotamians, and the mountain tribes of what is nowAfghanistan. Never before had a single, centralized authority uniteda population so numerous, varied, and far-flung.

>\tus and his successors, Cambyses II and Darius I, accom-ise to power in little more than a half-century. The dy-

s founded became known as the Achaemenid after an

48

Constructed out of large blocks of stone,the austere tomb of the Persian kingCyrus the Great rears more than 35 feethigh on the windswept Murghab plain.Cultural influences evident in the archi-tecture of the monumentfrom Mcsopota-mian stepped ziggurats to Anatoliantombssuggest that Cyrus was eager toadopt ideasfrom the variety ofpeoples whoinhabited his vast empire.

alleged ancestor, Aehaemenes. The Achaemenid empire survived forsome 200 years, and its political, social, and cultural imprints wereembedded in the centuries of imperial rule that followed under oth-er dynasties. The Achaemenids' methods of conquest and govern-ment served as an example to the later empire builders of Greece andRome; their spiritual beliefs influenced the shape of other religions;their inscriptions, monuments, and ruined cities enlightened histori-ans and challenged archaeologists.

An archaeological record of the Achaemenids1 ascendancyand triumph has been assembled from excavations carried out atsplendid royal capitals and humbler settlements. These have yieldednumerous messsages, structures, sculptures, ,\\k\ artifacts that answer

many questions about the civilization that created them, but gi\e riseto others. At the base of the archaeological record are the works of

ancient chroniclers. Their reports owe their existence, in part, to the

cultural and political ferment of the times. As armies tramped east orwest between the Middle Hast .md Europe, so too did diplomats,

merchants, physicians, colonists, soldiers of fortune, and other tra\

elers. The vivid accounts of these observers were given circulation,sometimes in distorted form, and often picked up and passed on by

49

such noted Greek authors asXenophon, Herodotus, andStrabo. There is also the testi-

mony of the compilers of theOld Testament, the Judeans,whose forebears were caughtup in the whirlwind of MiddleEastern politics. Other king-doms under Persian rule providedevidence of Achaemenid greatnessin letters, treaties, and military annals. Joining the texts of these vassal

peoples are the words of the Achaemenid kings themselves, eager to setdown for posterity their own versions ofevents. It is hardly surprising then diat the

reports provided by these different sources are,

at times, contradictory.

The records do agree, however, that when Cyrus theGreat came to manhood, the Middle East was ripe for political restructuring. For some 2,000 years, the region had been influenced or dominated by Egypt and Mesopotamia. By the early firstmillennium BC, however, previously unknown peoples were rising,among them the Medes of the Iranian Plateau. By the late seventhcentury BC, the Medes had made the transition from a group of dif-ferent tribes to a single political entity. They became allies of Baby-lon in a fierce military offensive against Assyria that brought about adramatic change in the Middle Eastern power structure.

Evidence of Median importance in that alliance appearedsome 26 centuries later in 1955, when a team from the British Schoolof Archaeology in Iraq, led by Max Mallowan, was sifting throughruins in the Assyrian capital of Nimrud. The archaeologists wereclearing debris from a throne room razed by Median invaders in612 BC. There they found some 350 fragments of baked-clay tabletsbearing cuneiform inscriptions. Piecing together this massive jigsawpuzzle, Barbara Parker, a member of the team, identified the tabletsas the official records of treaties made in 672 BC between the Assyr-ian king Esarhaddon and the chieftains of many different tribes orcities, including those of the Medes.

50

A DYNAMICMELDING OFART STYLES

^fiFmk^ I*

The mingling ofpeoples andcultures that helped shape thehistory of the ancient MiddleEast often had fertile effect onits art as well. A melding ofstyles, this gold pectoral, wrhichdates between the eighth andseventh centuries BC and ismore than one foot across, was

apparently among treasuresburied for safekeeping in abronze tub at Ziwiye, site of aruined fortress in northwestIran. No one knows whethertiiis hoard of gold, silver, andivoryfound in 1947 by a shep-herd boy and dispersed beforeit could be properly studied

was hidden by a defender of the

fortress or by aplunderer who in-

tended to come back forit. Nor can anyone say

whether the fortress was builtby the Assyrians or by their ri-vals, the Manneans. But the ex-ecution and iconography of thepectoral suggests that its makerhad ecclectic taste and that thefortress's inhabitants were more

cosmopolitan than might havebeen imagined.

The piece is divided intotwo bands, with ribbonliketrees of Urartian design at itscenter. In each of the uppercorners crouches a beast thatindicates the influence of theScythians, nomadic horsemenwho may have been responsiblefor the fort's destruction. In

both panels, various wingedbeasts echo the art of lands asfar-flung as Assyria, Syria,

Phoenicia, and perhaps Greece.

The documents asserted the loyalty of all these leaders toEsarhaddon, whom they affirmed as their supreme overlord. Theyagreed to stringent terms of obedience to his designated heir: "Youwill protect Ashurbanipal, the crown prince. You will not sin against

him; you will not bring your hand against him with evil intent. Youwill not revolt. You will not oust him from the kingship of Assyria byhelping one of his brothers, older or younger, to seize the throne ofAssyria in his stead." The conditions of the contract ran on at length,ending with the injunction that "whoever changes, neglects, ortransgres