The archaeology of Elam

by Daniel T. Potts

"From the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C. until the coming of Cyrus the Great, southwestern Iran was referred to in Mesopotamian sources as the land of Elam. A heterogeneous collection of regions, Elam was home to a variety of groups, alternately the object of Mesopotamian aggression, and aggressors themselves, an ethnic group seemingly swallowed up by the vast Achaemenid Persian empire, yet a force strong enough to attack Babylonia in the last centuries B.C. This book examines the formation and transformation of Elam's many identities through both archaeological and written evidence, and brings to life one of the most important regions of Western Asia, re-evaluates its significance, and places it in the context of the most recent archaeological and historical scholarship."--Jacket.