Still Sorting the Mail: The Assyrian Imperial Impress in Elam and Parsumaš

Abstract

Collated transliterations and updated translations of the Assyrian correspondence from Ashurbanipal’s reign relating to the south and southeast, primarily Elam and Babylonia, are among the latest and last State Archives of Assyria volumes to be published (S. Parpola, SAA XXI, 2018, and G. Frame, SAA XXII, forthcoming). There remains still much to be learned from this correspondence, not only about the dissolution of Elam in the 640s BCE but also, and not coincidentally, the geopolitical situation in southwestern Iran and the Elamite borderlands that impacted the rise of the kingdom of Parsa (Assyrian Parsumaš) under Cyrus the Great’s forebears, the so-called Teispid Dynasty. This paper will explore the state-of-the-question based on observations from these Assyrian and other sources: additional pieces of the puzzle may be added to help contextualize the rise of this new power. As one example, Ashurbanipal’s obsession with the Chaldean rebel, Nabû-bēl-šumāti – and the latter’s own evasiveness buoyed by Elamite aid – brought increased Assyrian involvement into Elamite affairs. As a consequence, Assyrian geopolitical concerns reached deeper into Fars, squeezing Elam between the Assyrian imperial impress and a nascent Persian power.