Of all the major constituents of the ancient Near East, Elam has surely proven one of the more difficult to come to grips with. For most students of antiquity Elam appears aloof, somewhat exotic – a place of hard-to-pronounce names, unfamiliar sites, a poorly understood language and a somewhat barbaric population to the east of Mesopotamia. Alternately subject to Mesopotamian domination or busily subverting it as best they could, the Elamites are present in the archaeological and written record for thousands of years, reacting to foreign aggression, forging local alliances of which we have few details, cropping up in the written record of their western neighbours, saying little of themselves in their own inscriptions. Archaeologists and historians have consciously or unconsciously regarded the brutal Assyrian campaigns against the Elamites in the seventh century BC as the final chapter in their troubled history, the rise of the Achaemenid Persians as a new dawn in Iranian antiquity which heralded the start of another era. Yet the Elamites and their language crop up in post-Elamite, ‘Persian’ Iran. Elamites appear in the histories of Alexander the Great and his Seleucid successors. In the guise of Elymaeans they fought for independence against the later Arsacid dynasty. And in the early Medieval era ‘Elam’ became the name of an ecclesiastical province of one of the most important branches of eastern Christianity, the Nestorian church. Anyone interested in the creation of identity and ethnicity, in the past or the present, will find in the story of Elam a palimpsest of ever-changing definitions of what it meant to be Elamite, glimpses of which are revealed in a patchwork of archaeological and epigraphic evidence as difficult to comprehend as any in the ancient Near East.

Numerous distinguished historians, sociologists, social theorists and anthropologists have explored the invention of national and ethnic consciousness and identity (e.g. Nash 1989; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Hobsbawm 1990; Fullbrook 1993; Teich and Porter 1993; Gillis 1994; Pickett 1996; Ross 1996; Bischof and Pelinka 1997), leaving us in no doubt that these are socially constructed and highly mutable. By the time the reader has reached the end of this book I would hope that not merely the artificiality of the construct ‘Elam’, but the notion that many Elams were constructed over time, no two of which were probably coterminous culturally, politically or geographically with each other, will have become clear.

Constantine's relations to the senate and to Rome's resident senatorial aristocracy have attracted a good deal of scholarly attention, but not consensus. In the aftermath of World War II a number of scholars followed a view developed by Hungarian scholar András Alföldi, who characterized that relationship as conflict-ridden and filled with friction between an aggressively Christianizing emperor and a staunchly pagan senatorial aristocracy, the only pagan group capable of resisting. In Alföldi's view, imperial laws advanced Christianity and any policies that favored senators or paganism were grudging concessions to a strong, overtly hostile pagan political party. Alföldi's model has been called into question. Since the 1980s, some scholars have argued that there was no religious or political conflict and no resistance on the part of Rome's once pagan senatorial aristocracy who, increasingly Christian themselves, simply acquiesced to a newly Christianized empire. Other scholars have argued that because Constantine was either tolerant of pagans, or was not a “really” committed Christian, there was no religious or political conflict with Rome's pagan senate and senatorial aristocracy. And others have argued that religion was not relevant to this relationship; as Van Dam sees it, appeals to religion were part of the language of power, not a source of conflict in and of themselves.

In my view, the differing opinions in the abundant literature on Constantine's relations to Rome's senate and resident senatorial aristocracy conflate three distinct issues – the nature of the conflict, imperial interest in Christianization, and the power of the senate and senators to speak openly. Consequently, some scholars assume a strong, pagan senate confronting an aggressively Christianizing ruler led to overt political and religious conflict. Other scholars assume an acquiescent pagan senate responding to a more or less tolerant Christian emperor resulted in the lack of political or religious conflict. But each element in this narrative requires independent consideration because their conjunction has been based on a number of false assumptions. In particular, the senate, as an institution, is in need of reconsideration for it was limited, politically, in facing an emperor in the early fourth century. Consequently, this chapter aims to disentangle the evidence and reconsider relations between Constantine and Rome's senate and resident senatorial aristocracy.

Although Elam may be mentioned as early as 3000 BC in the so-called Archaic texts from Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, it is not attested unambiguously in the historical record until the middle of the third millennium BC when it appears, in the Sumerian King List, as an adversary of the Sumerian city-state of Kish. A second Iranian region, known as Awan, also makes its appearance in a similar context at this time. Thereafter, both Awan and Elam are mentioned in a variety of Mesopotamian sources dating to the mid and late third millennium BC. After reviewing the literary evidence, we examine those contemporary archaeological remains from Khuzistan and the central western Zagros which have the greatest likelihood of representing the material equivalent of third millennium Elam and Awan. The use of the terms ‘Trans-Elam’ and ‘Trans-Elamite’ to describe a much more easterly portion of the Iranian Plateau and its material culture is also examined.

During the period from c. 2350 to 2150 BC we continue to see Elam largely through Mesopotamian eyes (see in general Álvarez-Mon 2013a). This was the time of the Old Akkadian dynasty in southern Mesopotamia which was founded by Sargon of Agade and ruled from an as yet unidentified capital in central Iraq. Elam figures in Old Akkadian royal inscriptions and literary works, though some of these are known only from much later copies. Repeated acts of aggression against Elam and Susiana are recorded, and the subjugation of Susa by the Akkadians is confirmed by a number of sources. It is interesting to examine the material culture of a site like Susa in light of its political history at this time. Slightly later, around 2100 BC, we are able to chart the rise and progress of an indigenous leader, Puzur-Inshushinak, the first Elamite (or Awanite) since the mid-third millennium BC to attack Mesopotamia itself. The question of whether Puzur-Inshushinak's short-lived consolidation of power in this period should be seen as a response to Mesopotamian aggression – in other words as a case of ‘secondary state formation’ – is considered, as is the significance of the so-called Linear Elamite inscriptions associated with Puzur-Inshushinak.

Introduction

In the middle of the third millennium BC, two eastern regions, Elam and Awan, appear in Mesopotamian cuneiform sources. In this chapter we shall first examine the earlier written sources from c.

The history and archaeology of Elam are marked by the intermittent reconfiguration of the entity which we call by that name. Although continuities can be observed, there is as much if not more evidence of transformation and disjuncture. This chapter considers the archaeological and historical trajectory of Elam in the light of discussions in the field of history which have emphasized both long-term continuities and short-term cycles. It also looks at the problem of centre and periphery within Elam, between Elam and its neighbours, and in the study of Elam vis-à-vis Mesopotamia in modern scholarship. The topic of ethnogenesis, introduced at the beginning of this study, is again broached, while the question is asked whether the foregoing study should be classified as history or archaeology. Finally, some suggestions are made which might have an impact on the enhancement of Elamite studies, and topics for further work are touched upon.

Beginning with the first references to Elam in the written record of the mid third millennium BC, we have surveyed between three and four thousand years of Elamite history and archaeology. Along the way, a host of detailed issues has been explored. Many of the more salient points have been brought together in the summary tables provided in Chapters 3 through 11, and these should serve the reader as a ready reference to the main features of Elamite archaeology and history. At this point I would like to address a number of concepts which may prove useful in coming to grips with the mass of data dealt with in the preceding chapters. These are aimed at reorienting the reader from the details to generalities, and at putting some of the issues raised by a study of Elam into a larger perspective.

The courte durée

The first issue I would like to raise is one of structure. To what extent do the various incarnations of Elam attested in the archaeological and written record display evidence of underlying structures which could be said to underpin Elam in all its various manifestations? As we have seen throughout this book, it was not merely the boundaries of Elam which changed through time, but its very nature. We have, in fact, found evidence of many Elams. These include the changing representation of Elam in a variety of external sources.