The Royal City of Susa

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254 I THE WRITTEN RECORD or from the classical historians, and those of other texts can still be easily misinterpreted. The under societies that had been wholly lost to history. standing of Elamite, however, is comparatively poor, The keys to the decipherments were the multi for various reasons including the absence of close cog lingual inscriptions of the Achaemenid Persian kings: nate languages, the relatively small size and narrow those at Persepolis, the great palace complex built by range of the corpus, the small number of bilingual Darius I (522-486 B. c.) and his successors near mod texts, and the almost complete absence of ancient na ern Shiraz, and the great rock inscription of Darius at tive lexical and grammatical scholarship. Translations Bisitun in the central Zagros (fig. 55). Travelers who from Elamite commonly involve a large measure of visited the sites and decipherers who worked on fac conjecture-although Elamite texts can still be sensi similes of the texts were quick to realize that two of the bly interpreted as historical evidence. languages in the inscriptions were not original to Persia. One was recognized as existing on older monu mental reliefs from Assyria and on bricks and tablets LANGUAGES AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT from Babylonia, and the decipherers correctly inferred that it was Babylonian. Another was also found in rock The use of both Mesopotamian and "Susian" lan ... inscriptions near Izeh in eastern Khuzistan, but es guages is emblematic of a general condition in the pecially in texts from Susa that seemed still older, history of Susa. Susa stood at a boundary between two and so one of the several names proposed for the Ian ancient realms; it was central to neither, but it partici guage that is now called Elamite was, appropriately, pated in both. It was tied to the cities, kingdoms, and "Susian." tribal territories of Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria to Since those nineteenth-century beginnings the the west but also to the populations and Elamite states Babylonian, Assyrian, Sumerian, and Elamite vari of the. Iranian highlands to the north and east, and ants of the cuneiform writing system have come to be above all to ancient Anshan, in modern Fars. The thoroughly understood, but the several languages that cultural and political life of Susa was strongly affected were written in the cuneiform script are understood to by contact and confrontation between these realms. varying degrees. Sumerian and Akkadian are well Eventually, when the Achaemenids came to dominate enough known to be confidently translated-although the formerly Elamite Fars and then to incorporate both the evidence drawn from Sumerian and Akkadian Mesopotamia and the region of Susa into their conti- Figure 55· Rock relief showing Darius I receiving conquered foreign kings, with inscriptions in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. Bisitun, Iran, Achaemenid period, reign of Darius I, ca. 522-486 B.C. .

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2 the Assyrian Empire, the Conquest of Israel, and the Colonization of Judah 37 I
ISRAEL AND EMPIRE ii ISRAEL AND EMPIRE A Postcolonial History of Israel and Early Judaism Leo G. Perdue and Warren Carter Edited by Coleman A. Baker LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY 1 Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as T&T Clark 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury, T&T Clark and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 © Leo G. Perdue, Warren Carter and Coleman A. Baker, 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Leo G. Perdue, Warren Carter and Coleman A. Baker have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-56705-409-8 PB: 978-0-56724-328-7 ePDF: 978-0-56728-051-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset by Forthcoming Publications (www.forthpub.com) 1 Contents Abbreviations vii Preface ix Introduction: Empires, Colonies, and Postcolonial Interpretation 1 I.
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