The Emergence of the Elamite City-States

The earliest part of present-day Iran to reach the level of urban and class civilization was the region which later was called Khūzistāan and which in ancient history is usually designated by its Biblical name of Elam (Hebr. 'Ēlām). It lies outside what geographically is the Iranian Plateau properly speaking, and is a plain surrounded from three sides by mountains and crossed by rivers flowing from the highlands into the Persian Gulf — the Karkhah (or Saimarreh, the Assyrian Uqnû, the Greek Choaspēs) and the Kārūn (the Assyrian Ulāi, the Eulaeus of the Greeks), as well as by the river Āb-i Diz (Copratēs) running parallel to the Karkhah but halfway down the plain flowing into the Kārūn. Through the ages the courses of the Karkhah, the Kārūn and its affluents, and the Āb-i Diz, as they ran across the lowlands of Elam, changed many times, and many canals, later silted up, have at various times been led from them into the parched country around, or between the rivers as their connection. The part of the alluvial plain nearer to the sea was in ancient times covered by shallow freshwater lakes and salt or brackish lagoons, overgrown with reeds and gradually turning into marshland, and the coastline lay farther north than now. The winter on the plain of Elam is mild, the temperature but seldom falling below zero Centigrade, and the summer very hot indeed, the heat sometimes reaching 60°C. The precipitation is scarce, but the valley can be irrigated by the water of the rivers.