Susa ( SOO-sə) was an ancient city in the lower Zagros Mountains about 250 km (160 mi) east of the Tigris, between the Karkheh and Dez Rivers in Iran. It represents the current city of Shush, located on the site of ancient Susa. One of the most important cities of the Ancient Near East, Susa served as the capital of Elam and the winter capital of the Achaemenid Empire, and remained a strategic centre during the Parthian and Sasanian periods.
Name
The name Susa is of Elamite origin and has appeared in many languages:
- Middle Elamite: 𒀸𒋗𒊺𒂗, romanized: Šušen
- Middle and Neo-Elamite: 𒋢𒋢𒌦, romanized: Šušun
- Neo-Elamite and Achaemenid Elamite: 𒀸𒋗𒐼𒀭, romanized: Šušan
- Achaemenid Elamite: 𒀸𒋗𒐼, romanized: Šuša
- Hebrew: שׁוּשָׁן Šūšān (Shushan)
- Ancient Greek: Σοῦσα Soûsa
- Old Persian: 𐏂𐎢𐏁𐎠 Çūšā
- Middle Persian: 𐭮𐭥𐭱𐭩 Sūš or 𐭱𐭥𐭮 Šūs
- New Persian: شوش Šuš [ʃuʃ]
- Syriac: ܫܘܫ Šuš
Literary references
Susa was one of the most important cities of the Ancient Near East. In historic literature, Susa appears in the very earliest Sumerian records: for example, it is described as one of the places obedient to Inanna, patron deity of Uruk, in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.
Hebrew Bible
Susa is mentioned by the name Shushan in the Hebrew Bible’s Ketuvim (Writings) section, chiefly in the Book of Esther (where the narrative events are set in Susa), and once each in the books of Ezra (4:9), Nehemiah (1:1), and Daniel (8:2). According to these Jewish biblical texts, Nehemiah lived in Susa during the Jews’ Babylonian captivity in the 5th century BC (as Daniel mentions in a prophetic vision), and Esther became queen in Susa when she married King Ahasuerus and subsequently saved the Jewish people of the Persian Empire from genocide.
A tomb presumed to be Daniel’s is located in the area of Susa, known as Shush-Daniel. While a large portion of the tomb’s current structure was dated to 1871, the identification of Susa as Daniel’s burial place has been cited by Jews such as Benjamin of Tudela at least as early as 1167 AD.
Ancient Greek Theatre
Susa is the setting for the Aeschylus play, The Persians. The play concerns the repercussions for Xerxes, and Persia, after his failed attempt to conquer Greece at the Battle of Salamis.
Pseudepigrapha
Susa is further mentioned in the Book of Jubilees (8:21 & 9:2) as one of the places within the inheritance of Shem and his eldest son Elam; and in 8:1, "Susan" is also named as the son (or daughter, in some translations) of Elam.
Islamic sources
Shushan is mentioned by Yaqubi as the first post-flood king, with a reign of 16 years.
Excavation history
The site was examined in 1836 by Henry Rawlinson and then by A. H. Layard.
In 1851, some modest excavation was done by William Loftus, accompanied by Fenwick Williams, who identified it as Susa. Among his finds was a jar containing around 110 coins, the earliest of which was dated to 697-98 AD.
In 1885 and 1886 Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy and Jane Dieulafoy began the first French excavations, discovering glazed bricks, column bases, and capitals from the palace of the Achaemenid kings. However, they failed to identify mudbrick walls, which were then destroyed in the course of excavation. Almost all of the excavations at Susa, post-1885, were organized and authorized by the French government.
In two treaties in 1894 and 1899, the French gained a monopoly on all archaeological excavations in Iran indefinitely. Jacques de Morgan, after visiting the site in 1891, conducted major excavations from 1897 until 1911. De Morgan headed the newly formed French Délégation en Perse, which would continue to oversee French archeological activity in Iran under various names until the Iranian Revolution of 1979, focusing mainly on the plain of Susiana. The excavations that were conducted in Susa brought many artistic and historical artifacts back to France. These artifacts filled multiple halls in the Museum of the Louvre throughout the late 1890s and early 1900s. De Morgan's most important work was the excavation of the Grande Tranchée in the Acropole mound, where he found the stele of Naram-Sin, a collection of Babylonian kudurrus (boundary stones), the stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi, an ornamented bronze table of snakes, the bronze statue of Queen Napir-Asu, and thousands of inscribed bricks. His finds showed Susa to be the most important center of Elamite civilization, which was effectively discovered by the French mission at Susa. Unfortunately, de Morgan, trained originally as a mining engineer, was primarily concerned with the neolithic levels of the site and destroyed many of the later historical layers through a combination of negligence and intentional demolition. While his methods were well suited for pre-historic sites, it irrevocably damaged the archeological landscape of Susa, destroying much of the architectural remains of the site and by extension the provenance of many of the remarkable objects uncovered. De Morgan also oversaw the construction of Shush Castle, a European medieval style castle on the northernmost edge of the Acropole, which was made largely out of spoliated bricks taken from the ancient site itself. While the castle was ostensibly built to protect the excavators from attacks by nearby bandits, the castle was administered directly by the Délégation en Perse and its successor agencies, and was considered the property of the French government outside the jurisdiction of the then Qajar government of Iran. Despite the richness of the archeological material found during de Morgan's excavations, especially from the Elamite period, he gradually lost interest in the site when it did not yield the breadth of neolithic material he had hoped for. He did not return to Susa after 1907, and resigned his post as director of the Délégation en Perse in 1912 after being accused of mismanaging the agency's funds.
Following de Morgan's departure in 1907, excavation efforts continued under his successor Roland de Mecquenem until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. De Mecquenem, like de Morgan, was trained primarily as a mining engineer, and had worked at Susa since de Morgan brought him to the site in 1903. De Mecquenem followed a similarly destructive methodology to his predecessor, described by the classical archeologist Laurianne Martinez-Sève, a specialist in Hellenistic Susa, as "bulk clearings more like removing earthworms than conducting true scientific excavations." After the resignation of Jacques de Morgan in 1912, the Délégation en Perse was reconstituted as the French Mission Archéologique de Perse, with no single director. De Mecquenem conducted all further excavation under the local mandate of the French Mission Archéologique de Susiane, which he co-directed alongside the Assyriologist Father Vincent Scheil, who focused on the texts found at the site and oversaw the local Mission's publications. French work at Susa resumed after the end of World War I, still led by De Mecquenem, and continued excavations until the ramp up of tensions preceding the start of World War II in 1939. Earlier, in 1927, two years after the overthrow of the Qajar dynasty in favor of the new Pahlavi dynasty, the French monopoly on archeological excavation in Iran was rescinded. While this was a major sea-change in the landscape of Iranian archeology overall, the excavations at Susa were minimally affected, with de Mecquenem continuing his excavations at Susa until 1938. In 1934, Louis le Breton joined the French expedition, working as de Mecquenem's assistant. It was under le Breton's direction that many of the smaller sites surrounding Susa, such as Jafarabad and Jowi were first excavated. To supplement the original publications of De Mecquenem the archives of his excavation have now been put online thanks to a grant from the Shelby White Levy Program.
Roman Ghirshman took over direction of the French efforts in 1946, after the end of the war. Together with his wife Tania Ghirshman, he continued there until 1967. The Ghirshmans concentrated on excavating a single part of the site, the hectare sized Ville Royale, taking it all the way down to bare earth. The pottery found at the various levels enabled a stratigraphy to be developed for Susa.
From 1969 until 1979 excavations were conducted under Jean Perrot.
In 2019 the Susa salvage project was launched to counter the construction of a transportation underpass in the vicinity of the site.
History
Early settlement
In urban history, Susa is one of the oldest-known settlements of the region. Based on calibrated carbon-14 dating, the foundation of a settlement there occurred as early as 4200 BC. In the region around Susa were a number of towns (with their own platforms) and villages that maintained a trading relationship with the city, especially those along the Zagro frontier.
The founding of Susa corresponded with the abandonment of nearby villages. Potts suggests that the settlement may have been founded to try to reestablish the previously destroyed settlement at Chogha Mish, about 25 km to the west. Previously, Chogha Mish was a very large settlement, and it featured a similar massive platform that was later built at Susa.
Another important settlement in the area is Chogha Bonut, which was discovered in 1976.
Susa I period (4200–3800 BC)
Shortly after Susa was first settled over 6000 years ago, its inhabitants erected a monumental platform that rose over the flat surrounding landscape. The exceptional nature of the site is still recognizable today in the artistry of the ceramic vessels that were placed as offerings in a thousand or more graves near the base of the temple platform.
Susa's earliest settlement is known as the Susa I period (c. 4200–3900 BC). Two settlements named by archaeologists the Acropolis (7 ha) and the Apadana (6.3 ha), would later merge to form Susa proper (18 ha). The Apadana was enclosed by 6 metre thick walls of rammed earth (this particular place is named Apadana because it also contains a late Achaemenid structure of this type).
Nearly two thousand pots of Susa I style were recovered from the cemetery, most of them now in the Louvre. The vessels found attest to the artistic and technical achievements of their makers, and they hold clues about the organization of the society that commissioned them.
Painted ceramic vessels from Susa in the earliest first style are a late, regional version of the Mesopotamian Ubaid ceramic tradition that spread across the Near East during the fifth millennium BC. Susa I style was very much a product of the past and of influences from contemporary ceramic industries in the mountains of western Iran. The recurrence in close association of vessels of three types—a drinking goblet or beaker, a serving dish, and a small jar—implies the consumption of three types of food, apparently thought to be as necessary for life in the afterworld as it is in this one. Ceramics of these shapes, which were painted, constitute a large proportion of the vessels from the cemetery. Others are coarse cooking-type jars and bowls with simple bands painted on them and were probably the grave goods of the sites of humbler citizens as well as adolescents and, perhaps, children. The pottery is carefully made by hand. Although a slow wheel may have been employed, the asymmetry of the vessels and the irregularity of the drawing of encircling lines and bands indicate that most of the work was done freehand.
Metallurgy
Copper metallurgy is also attested during this period, which was contemporary with metalwork at some highland Iranian sites such as Tepe Sialk.
As many as 40 copper axes have been found at the Susa cemetery, as well as 10 round discs probably used as mirrors. Many awls and spatulas were also found.
The cemetery of Chega Sofla, from the same timeframe, provides a lot of similar material, with many sophisticated metal objects. Chega Sofla is located in the same geographical area.
Susa II and Uruk influence (3800–3100 BC)
Susa came within the Uruk cultural sphere during the Uruk period. An imitation of the entire state apparatus of Uruk, proto-writing, cylinder seals with Sumerian motifs, and monumental architecture is found at Susa. The comparative periodization of Susa and Uruk at this time remains disputed among scholars with some research indicating that Early Uruk period corresponds to Susa II period.