Babylon and Elam 2

Such are the main facts which until recently had been ascertained
with regard to the influence of early Babylonian rulers in Elam. The
information is obtained mainly from Babylonian sources, and until
recently we have been unable to fill in any details of the picture
from the Elamite side. But this inability has now been removed by M.
de Morgan's discoveries. From the inscribed bricks, cones, stel?, and
statues that have been brought to light in the course of his excavations
at Susa, we have recovered the name of a succession of native Elamite
rulers. All those who are to be assigned to this early period, during
which Elam owed allegiance to the kings of Babylonia, ascribe to
themselves the title of _patesi_, or viceroy, of Susa, in acknowledgment
of their dependence. Their records consist principally of building
inscriptions and foundation memorials, and they commemorate the
construction or repair of temples, the cutting of canals, and the like.
They do not, therefore, throw much light upon the problems connected
with the external history of Elam during this early period, but we
obtain from them a glimpse of the internal administration of the
country. We see a nation without ambition to extend its boundaries, and
content, at any rate for the time, to owe allegiance to foreign rulers,
while the energies of its native princes are devoted exclusively to the
cultivation of the worship of the gods and to the amelioration of the
conditions of the life of the people in their charge.
A difficult but interesting problem presents itself for solution at the
outset of our inquiry into the history of this people as revealed by
their lately recovered inscriptions,--the problem of their race and
origin. Found at Susa in Elam, and inscribed by princes bearing purely
Elamite names, we should expect these votive and memorial texts to be
written entirely in the Elamite language. But such is not the case,
for many of them are written in good Semitic Babylonian. While some
are entirely composed in the tongue which we term Elamite or Anzanite,
others, so far as their language and style is concerned, might have been
written by any early Semitic king ruling in Babylonia. Why did early
princes of Susa make this use of the Babylonian tongue?

At first sight it might seem possible to trace a parallel in the use of
the Babylonian language by kings and officials in Egypt and Syria
during the fifteenth century B.C., as revealed in the letters from
Tell el-Amarna. But a moment's thought will show that the cases are not
similar. The Egyptian or Syrian scribe employed Babylonian as a medium
for his official foreign correspondence because Babylonian at that
period was the _lingua franca_ of the East. But the object of the
early Elamite rulers was totally different. Their inscribed bricks and
memorial stel? were not intended for the eyes of foreigners, but for
those of their own descendants. Built into the structure of a temple,
or buried beneath the edifice, one of their principal objects was to
preserve the name and deeds of the writer from oblivion. Like similar
documents found on the sites of Assyrian and Babylonian cities, they
sometimes include curses upon any impious man, who, on finding the
inscription after the temple shall have fallen into ruins, should in
any way injure the inscription or deface the writer's name. It will be
obvious that the writers of these inscriptions intended that they should
be intelligible to those who might come across them in the future. If,
therefore, they employed the Babylonian as well as the Elamite language,
it is clear that they expected that their future readers might be either
Babylonian or Elamite; and this belief can only be explained on the
supposition that their own subjects were of mixed race.
It is therefore certain that at this early period of Elamite history
Semitic Babylonians and Elamites dwelt side by side in Susa and retained
their separate languages. The problem therefore resolves itself into the
inquiry: which of these two peoples occupied the country first? Were the
Semites at first in sole possession, which was afterwards disputed by
the incursion of Elamite tribes from the north and east? Or were the
Elamites the original inhabitants of the land, into which the Semites
subsequently pressed from Babylonia?
A similar mixture of races is met with in Babylonia itself in the
early period of the history of that country. There the early Sumerian
inhabitants were gradually dispossessed by the invading Semite, who
adopted the civilization of the conquered race, and took over the system
of cuneiform writing, which he modified to suit his own language. In
Babylonia the Semites eventually predominated and the Sumerians as a
race disappeared, but during the process of absorption the two languages
were employed indiscriminately. The kings of the First Babylonian
Dynasty wrote their votive inscriptions sometimes in Sumerian, sometimes
in Semitic Babylonian; at other times they employed both languages
for the same text, writing the record first in Sumerian and afterwards
appending a Semitic translation by the side; and in the legal and
commercial documents of the period the old Sumerian legal forms and
phrases were retained intact. In Elam we may suppose that the use of the
Sumerian and Semitic languages was the same.
It may be surmised, however, that the first Semitic incursions into Elam
took place at a much later period than those into Babylonia, and under
very different conditions. When overrunning the plains and cities of the
Sumerians, the Semites were comparatively uncivilized, and, so far as we
know, without a system of writing of their own. The incursions into
Elam must have taken place under the great Semitic conquerors, such as
Sar-gon and Nar?m-Sin and Alu-usharshid. At this period they had fully
adopted and modified the Sumerian characters to express their own
Semitic tongue, and on their invasion of Elam they brought their system
of writing with them. The native princes of Elam, whom they conquered,
adopted it in turn for many of their votive texts and inscribed
monuments when they wished to write them in the Babylonian language.

Such is the most probable explanation of the occurrence in Elam of
inscriptions in the Old Babylonian language, written by native princes
concerning purely domestic matters. But a further question now suggests
itself. Assuming that this was the order in which events took place,
are we to suppose that the first Semitic invaders of Elam found there a
native population in a totally undeveloped stage of civilization? Or did
they find a population enjoying a comparatively high state of culture,
different from their own, which they proceeded to modify and transform!
Luckily, we have not to fall back on conjecture for an answer to these
questions, for a recent discovery at Susa has furnished material from
which it is possible to reconstruct in outline the state of culture of
these early Elamites.
This interesting discovery consists of a number of clay tablets
inscribed in the proto-Elamite system of writing, a system which was
probably the only one in use in the country during the period before the
Semitic invasion. The documents in question are small, roughly formed
tablets of clay very similar to those employed in the early periods of
Babylonian history, but the signs and characters impressed upon them
offer the greatest contrast to the Sumerian and early Babylonian
characters with which we are familiar. Although they cannot be fully
deciphered at present, it is probable that they are tablets of accounts,
the signs upon them consisting of lists of figures and what are
probably ideographs for things. Some of the ideographs, such as that for
"tablet," with which many of the texts begin, are very similar to the
Sumerian or Babylonian signs for the same objects; but the majority are
entirely different and have been formed and developed upon a system of
their own.