Elam was the southern kingdom, or afterward province, of what was later called Persia. The name Persia conies into use as the name Elam begins to be lost, when the successors of Cyrus preferred to call themselves kings of Persia rather than of Elam. So the word Elam points to a pre-exilic period, rather than post-exilic.
In the case of Susa, the city may well be called the Palace, as it was the palace that gave it its distinction and that has remained in splendid ruins to this day—first the old palace of Memnon, then that of Darius. We are indebted for our knowl edge of Shushan chiefly to the recent excavations of M. Dieulafoy and his courageous wife, the fruits of which were only about three years ago put into the museum of the Louvre in Paris.
The city of Shushan is mentioned in the Bible, not only in the Book of Esther as the place where the events took place, hut also in the first verse of Nehemiah as the capital from which the patriotic Hebrew governor started on his mission to re build Jerusalem. It is also mentioned in connec tion with one of Daniel's visions. Elam is much more frequently mentioned, first in the race table in Genesis x, and often afterwards in the Proph ets. The word Elam simply means high land, as opposed to the low land about the Mesopota mian plains.
A very careful study of Shushan has appeared within a few months in Germany, by A. Billerbeck, entitled Suso: a Study of the Ancient History of Western Asia. This work gathers together the history of Elam, as far as is known to us. and of its famous and beautiful capital, as studied by Loftus, Dieulafoy, and others. We first hear of this country about 300o B. C., and it has even been supposed that the earliest population of Babylonia, called Accadim, or Sumerim, brought their first civilization out of the hill country of Elam.
But the earliest population of Babylonia and of the outlying districts of Elam were of a widely extended race who are called negritoes, to distin guish them from negroes. Their skin was dark brown to black, and their hair and eyes were black. They were evidently little mixed with Semitic blood, and their descendants are still found in the neighborhood ; they are a timid and oppressed peo ple who have not entirely lost their distinctive marks. The high lands were occupied from the earliest known times by a more vigorous race, and we may believe these whites to have been Mon golians which came from the north. A Semitic invasion starting from Arabia, before 300o B. C.,
and which covered Assyria and Babylonia, must also have reached Elam. The Iranians, or true Persians, representing an Aryan stock land culture, came much later with the Persians from the north.
The old Mongolian name of Elam was Ansan, Elam being the Semitic designation. Our first knowledge of the country reaches back into legendary times. In what is called the Nimrod epic of ancient Babylonia we are told that the hero Gilgamesh (Izdubar, or Nimrod) delivered Babylonia from an Elamite tyrant Khumbaba, whether representing the original negrito popula tion or the Mongol is not certain, but more prob ably the latter was the ruling class even in the earliest historical times.
About 230o B. C. one of the great events in the world's history occurred, the irruption from the East of a vast horde of Mongolians over the west ern part of Asia. One branch of them crossed the northern Tigris and Euphrates, and did not stop until it entered Egypt, mixed with the Semites, whom they drove before them, and established the Hyksos dynasty. The other passed over Elam, and overran Babylonia to the Persian Gulf. This gave rise to the Elamite dynasty, which ruled Babylonia for perhaps a century; and which we know in the Biblical Chedorlaomer king of Elam, who made a raid nearly as far as Egypt in the time of Abraham. But the Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia drove them out, and established the purely Semitic dynasty of Hannnurabi. The date of this conquest is fixed only by an Assyrian doc ument which tells how King Assur-bani-pal re covered from Susa an image of Nana, the goddess of the morning, which had been carried off from Erech by the Elainites seventeen centuries before.
But the hill country is apt to dominate the in habitants of the low lands, and about i600 B. C. another Elamite invasion conquered Babylonia and ruled for about two centuries, being the prevailing power in the East, with its capital at Susa. The Assyrian power began to be developed about this time, and lived at peace with Elam until the ninth century B. C., after which there were recurring wars, until Assur-bani-pal utterly conquered Elam and destroyed Susa. Meanwhile an Aryan or Iranian race from the North and East was prepar ing to subdue the Mongolians; and Cyrus, him self, tracing his origin chiefly from Elam, but with some Aryan blood, was the founder of the king dom of Persia, which overthrew Babylon, conquer ing Nabonidus and his son Belshazzar. (See BELSHAZZAR).