Elam-Babylionia's Neighbor That Became Persia (Iran) Part VII

 

Elam -Babylonia's Neighbor That Became Persia (Iran)

 Nadene Goldfoot                                        

Elam (3300 BCE-539 BCE)  was another ancient state that lie East of Babylonia which would be the modern Khuzistan.  It's capital was Susa, the very same Shushan in the Book of Esther.  Persia grew out of Elam and is now called Iran.  

Sumer/Sumeria was the region of southern Babylonia named after a non-Semitic people which migrated there in prehistoric times and founded a series of city-states.  Its culture was of the Babylonian civilization  and influenced the Semitic inhabitants of ACCAD to the north and south and is not specifically mentioned in the Bible but some early names like Nimrod and Cush are connected with Sumerian tradition.

The Elamites are classed in the Tanakh as children of Shem, and the Jews come from Shem as well.  Chedorlaomer was the king of Elam, and together with 3 other friendly states to him, who attacked the kings of Southern Canaan in the neighborhood of the Dead Sea and was in turn defeated by Abraham, who lived during the 2nd millennium BCE.

                                           

     Kassites was another spelling of Chaldees as in Ur of the Chaldees.  
                                       

Elamites were involved in Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem in 704 BCE and Ashurbanipal transferred part of the population of Elamites to Samaria after 639 BCE.  

Jews may have been involved in Elam from the period of the Babylonian Exile.  Under Persian (Iran) rule, their numbers were considerable;  and they were still of importance several centuries later.  Jews remained significant in and after the Gaonic Period. 

                                                

Sargon of Akkad had a dynasty of rulers involved with Ur of the Chaldees. A gift of a mace-head found in a dig may have been  of Sargon himself as many vases had been dedicated by his son Rimush, which were treasure selected from the king's share of the "booty of Elam" after the king of all had smitten Elam and Barakhsi. 

                                                   

 

During the 3rd Dynasty of Ur (2100-2000 BCE) the Ziggurat was built in Ur and was a peculiar feature of Mesopotamian architecture, also found in ancient Elam. 

 During the period from 2112 to 2004 BCE, the 3rd dynasty of Ur had crashed and the Elamite forces broke into the city and sacked the temples which no doubt were full of gold,  and wantonly destroyed the offerings of ancient kings that were stored there.  

Elamite invaders had destroyed "The Great Store- house" built by Ur- Nammu in Ur.  Very little of it had survived and it would have been impossible to understand the tattered remnants of his walls had been rebuilt on a somewhat larger scale but on almost identical line.  Just after it had been all restored, the whole thing was razed to the ground by the Elamites. 

 The Elamites, when they sacked Ur, destroyed Dublamokh and carried off the statue of Nanna to Anshan (the modern Tepe Malyan in (Persia-Iran), their own city , but as soon as the dynasty of Isin was established, its kings took the work of repair in hand. Nanna was the moon god.  

"Nanna (also known as Nannar, Nanna-Suen, Sin, Asimbabbar, Namrasit, Inbu) is the Mesopotamian god of the moon and wisdom. He is one of the oldest gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon and is first mentioned at the very dawn of writing in the region c. 3500 BCE. His cult center was the great temple at Ur, and he is frequently mentioned in hymns and inscriptions from the Ur III Period (2047-1750 BCE) as the chief god of the pantheon with the epithet Enzu, lord of wisdom."  

Another chamber found in Ur meant to be a foundation-deposit, had been broken open and looted by the Elamites.  The archaeologists found the remains of 2 bodies inside it.  (p. 166)  Evidently some votive object of intrinsic value was embedded in the brickwork and the Elamites, well informed as to where treasure might be found, overlooked nothing.  Yet  the Woolleys found some great pieces left behind of gold.  

One interesting fact was that bricks used in building were all stamped with the king's name of that building period.  This is how the archaeologists could tell much of the history.  Sometimes old used bricks were used in a new building, and there were the names.  Are we that clever in our buildings?  

In the last building of excavation by the Woolleys, they found inscribed tablets bearing dates which took them up to the last year of the reign of Ibbi-Sin, the last king of Ur-Nammu's dynasty, who was defeated and carried off prisoner by the Elamites, who were so thorough in their plundering that they plundered and sacked both shrines and vaults.           

The Old Babylonian Periods from 2000 to 1600 BCE: Days of Abraham-Eulogy

That Nanna shows no respect for his people as numerous as ewes, That of Ur, its shrine of the great offerings, the offerings be changed, That its people no longer inhabit its dwellings, that it be made inimical soil  That the Su-people and the Elamites, the  enemies, inhabit their dwellings, That its shepherd living in terror in the palace be seized by the foe  That Ibbi-Sin be brought back to the land of Elam in a trap. (pl 179).

 This history shows that what was written in the bible about these places were true;  they did exist.  The bible is a recorded source of our ancient history.  Since the year 10,000 BCE, there was a vibrant world happening with kings and all the impulses of people of today.  We are so lucky to have had Abraham to be alive then and Moses to write about it for posterity.  Events that happened were also recorded in other pieces of evidence and in archaeology.  

What goes around comes around.  I believe that Terah and his son, Abraham and family were refugees from attacks by Elam on Ur, their home. It may not have happened yet to them, but Elam must have shown incidences of their plans of attack.  It was the reason along with their disfavor in continuing to sell idols, knowing it was a false belief and they were presenting that belief in Terah's shop.  

That's why they migrated Westward towards Canaan.  The Bible doesn't tell us that but having found such evidence points to it.  This event was about 4,000 years ago: 2000 BCE to 2020 CE.  We find that Israel and the USA are being threatened by the Iranians once again.

Ur Kasdim is the birthplace of Abraham, rendered in English as Ur of the Chaldees.  Chaldeans settled in the vicinity around 850 BCE, but were not extant anywhere in Mesopotamia during the 2nd millennium BCE when Abraham is traditionally held to have lived.  The Chaldean dynasty did not rule Babylonia until the late 7t century BCE.  Ur is mentioned 4 times in the Torah, in Genesis 11:28;  11:31;  15:7, and in Nehemiah 9:7.  

There have been a few other conflicting traditions and scholarly opinions identifying Ur Kadim with the sites of Sanliurfa, Urkesh, Urartu or Kutha. I believe the most reliable source is our Torah, which fits so well with other historic facts such as the religion of that period that Abraham was leaving.  

Our history of Abraham of the 2nd millennium would have him born in about 1948 BCE which would be almost 4,000 years ago, or 3,968.  We are in the Jewish year of 5781.  This happened about 1,813 after our beginning, which I feel is that of Homo Sapiens in the food gathering -flock raising period. Ur at this time was quite well developed with gold statutes of all kinds.  It was a period of cities attacking cities, and Ur was a city of Sumer, later attacked by Elam.      

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia 

Ur of the Chaldees by Sir Leonard Woolley

https://www.ancient.eu/Nanna/