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Near East Kingdoms

Ancient Eastern Near East

 

Chogha Mish (City) (Western Iran)

FeatureThe city states of Sumer formed one of the first great civilisations in human history (see feature link). This Near Eastern civilisation emerged a little way ahead of that of Africa's ancient Egypt, and up to a millennium before that of the Indus Valley culture.

FeatureSouthern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and the western edge of Iran) was subjected to permanent settlement during the Pottery Neolithic and, by the late fourth millennium BC, Sumer was divided into approximately a dozen city states, by which time other regions were emerging as population centres in their own right. Elam was located to the east of Sumer, with its own selection of city states at its core (and see feature link).

This region was located on an alluvial plan below the Zagros mountains, and its remoteness meant that it took some time for it to assimilate Sumer's groundbreaking social, agricultural, and administrative inventions. Access to Sumer was in the Zagros foothills, circling the marshes, but this meant difficulties in communication, and a feeling in Sumer of there being comparative barbarians on their eastern flank.

Culturally, Elamite states achieved less than their more advanced neighbours, and imported much of what they needed, including writing from Sumer and architecture from the later city and empire of Babylon. Elamite records are also extremely sparse in recording local events, and large areas of its history are almost totally unknown except through Sumerian records.

For a good deal of its early independent history - and certainly prior to the launch of the Achaemenid empire - Elam was much more a land of city states along the same lines as Sumer, and far less a unified state which implacably opposed Sumer.

One of its earliest cities was located on the archaeological mound of Chogha Mish (or Choga Mish, without the 'h' but, more accurately, Choghā Mīsh). Its ancient name has been lost, unsurprisingly since it was largely abandoned at the very start of the process of writing being used for anything other than accounting purposes.

Susa in later centuries was the 'mother city', located in the Elamite lowlands of the region's western edge. It was established around 7000 BC, about the same time as Chogha Mish, although Chogha Mish was initially more advanced until the later fourth millennium BC at least.

Chogha Mish was a near neighbour, located about twenty-five kilometres to the east of Susa, and more immediately to the east of the River Dez. Chogha Bonut, a similar site which never reached Chogha Mish's level of development sits about six kilometres to the west.

The archaeological site consists of a cone-shaped mound which has a large terrace on its southern side. The mound covers territory which amounts to about two hundred metres by one hundred and fifty metres, rising to a height over the surrounding plain of about twenty-seven metres. The first excavations took place during eleven seasons between 1961-1978. Elamite structures of the Eparti period - which include a fort - are located on the upper levels (the most recent), dating to the early second millennium BC.

The most substantial finds were from what is sometimes termed the proto-literate period, otherwise the Uruk IV period which dominated the fourth millennium BC. A number of contemporary clay cylinder seal impressions were also found, some of which seem to include representations of spinning, weaving, and churning, while others reveal the remarkable presence of what would seem to be a single individual who holds a position of dominance (see about 3500 BC in the timeline).

It has been suggested (by Pollock, at least) that Susa's original population flocked in from many of the surrounding towns and villages, which were being abandoned as a prelude to Susa's official city foundation. The burning down of at least a portion of Chogha Mish may have been related in some way with this foundation. This act could have been a deliberate attempt to re-establish some form of advanced centre, with the previous one being abandoned in its favour.

Elamites of Din Sharri being deported by Ashurbanipal

Principal author(s): Page created: Page last updated:

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character, Samuel Noah Kramer ('List 1' of Sumerian rulers, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1963), from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Heywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, Michael Road (Facts on File, 2000), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Enrico Ascalone (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007), from The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, S Lloyd (Revised Ed, London, 1984), from Mesopotamia, Chris Scarre (Ed, Past Worlds - The Times Atlas of Archaeology, Guild Publishing, London 1989), from The Archaeology of Elam, D T Potts (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and from External Links: Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Albrecht Goetze (Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol 15, No 3, 1961, pp 105-111 and available to read via University of Chicago Press Journals), and Archaeology.org.)

c.7000 BC

From about this period onwards the first traces of civilisation appear in the Elamite region of what today is western Iran. Later to be a great regional city, Susa now shows traces of early settlement. The nearby settlement at Chogha Mish - also founded about this time - is initially more advanced, however.

Pre-Pottery Neolithic house at Beidha
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) lasted in the Levant until the middle of the sixth millennium BC, but the lack of pottery certainly did not prevent rapid advances in early farming techniques and the creation of settled town life, as shown by this sample PPN house at Beidha

Little contact of note exists with western areas which are about to start the Pottery Neolithic. Settlement in the adjacent Sumer does not really take off for a further two or three millennia, after irrigation techniques have been perfected. Occupation may possibly be dominated by an Elamite highlands-originated population of PPNB agriculturalists.

c.4500 BC

The proto-Elamite settlement of Chogha Mish has grown to a size of seventeen hectares. Around the early-to-middle part of the fifth millennium BC the settlement's main monumental building is destroyed.

To modern archaeologists this is the 'Burnt Building'. The building's destruction coincides with several settlements in the eastern half of the Susiana plain being fully abandoned while, in the western half, Susa is expanded.

c.3900 BC

Susa emerges as an important regional centre at the start of the Uruk IV period in Sumer, during which the city of Uruk flourishes as the only real urban centre there. Susa thoroughly absorbs Sumer's material culture and soon begins using it with an Elamite twist.

Ruins of Chogha Mish in Iran
Established around 7000 BC, about the same time as Susa, the city of Chogha Mish sat on the same alluvial plain in south-western Iran and was initially more advanced until the later fourth millennium BC at least

The 'Susa II' city grows in size, perhaps at the cost of denuding surrounding villages of their populations, and almost certainly denuding Chogha Mish of its population. Susa's reconstruction would appear to be managed and planned, perhaps even as a more viable replacement for the nearby abandoned towns and villages.

c.3500 - 3400 BC

The proto-Elamite city of Susa now covers a site of about twenty-five hectares. Neighbouring sites such as Chogha Mish and Abu Fanduweh - clearly not fully abandoned - also enjoy something of a resurgence, if relatively minor by comparison. Like Susa, they have developed residential 'lower town' areas away from the central mound (the initial settlement site).

The presence of door and jar seals at the rural hamlet of Tepe Sharafabad (which sits close to the Sumerian alluvium in the west) suggests that small settlements are linked up with a central administration at one of the larger sites - quite possibly Susa or Chogha Mish.

General Map of Sumer
Elamite city development started later than in Sumer, with generally-smaller cities and patchier inhabitation, but many are shown in this general Sumer map to help pinpoint them in relation to their better-known Sumerian equivalents (click or tap on map to view full sized)

The size differentiation of sites in the area at this time can be interpreted as the reflection of a hierarchy of settlements which may participate in a network of local, inter-regional exchange and yet still sometimes come into conflict with one another. This network has been dubbed the 'Susiana polity'.

fl c.3500s? BC

?

Unnamed 'priest-king' of Uruk and the Susa plain.

 

At a point around the middle of the fourth millennium BC, there appear several cylinder seal impressions in Uruk, Susa, and Chogha Mish. They show a bearded male figure who, it has been suggested, is a priest-king, perhaps one of the earliest as this institution has yet to emerge with any certainty in Sumer.

The priest-king of Susa, as shown on a cylinder seal
A 'Susa II' and late Uruk IV seal impression showing the 'priest-king', one of several from Susa, Uruk, and Chogha Mish (this one is from Susa: Sb 2125), in which he stands to the left, wielding a composite bow, and aiming an arrow at opponents, some of whom he has shot, while the building is an example of architectural dressing which became regionally-embedded

c.3100 - 2700 BC

The Uruk IV influence suddenly fades for reasons unknown. Older traditions re-emerge in places which had previously taken on board Uruk influences. The Uruk-inspired centre at Susa in Elam seems to be taken over by immigrants from the Zagros mountains (or at least it witnesses an indigenous return to pre-Uruk political and cultural controls).

A new political entity emerges which discards Uruk IV cuneiform and language to replace it with 'Proto-Elamite', a precursor to the usage of all later Elamite city states. This ends the 'Susiana polity' and, for quite some time, the spirit of regional unity which previously seemed to predominate in the surrounding villages and towns, such as Abu Fanduweh and Tepe Sharafabad.

FeatureThe proto-Elamite period witnesses the development of a semi-pictographic writing system for the east. Susa begins to be influenced by the cultures of the Iranian plateau to the east (see feature link), and it dominates the lowlands to the west of the Zagros mountains.

Archaeology in the earliest layers of Susa
Recent archaeology at the ancient site of Susa has confirmed traces of a village which was inhabited around 7000 BC, and painted pottery dating from about 5000 BC, along with previous finds at later levels which include carved cylinder seals, jewellery, clay balls, and clay tablets with cuneiform inscriptions which record business transactions, political history, and mathematical calculations

It also cuts off these access points from post-Uruk IV Sumer, enforcing new trading connections which go through Susa itself. Susa develops new ruling traditions while Choga Mish is abandoned, presumably with Susa now absorbing its population.

c.1595 BC

It appears that at the same time as they take control in Babylon, the Kassites are able to devastate Elam. The final stages of (non-continuous) occupation of Chogha Mish end with the Eparti-era fort here being abandoned after no more than around two centuries of occupation (an Achaemenid village briefly appears on the site in the first millennium BC). Elam slides into gradual obscurity.

 
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