Susa, City-state of

Susa is one of the oldest-known settlements of the region and the world, possibly founded about 4200 BCE.

Archeologists have dated the first traces of an inhabited Neolithic village to c 7000 BCE.

Evidence of a painted-pottery civilization has been dated to c 5000 BCE.

Its name in Elamiteis written variously Ŝuŝan, Ŝuŝun, etc.

The origin of the word Susa is from the local city deity Inshushinak.Like its Chalcolithic neighbor Uruk, Susa begins as a discrete settlement in the Susa I period (c. 4000 BCE).

These two settlements, called Acropolis (7 ha) and Apadana (6.3 ha) by archeologists, will later merge to form Susa proper (18 ha).

The Apadana is enclosed by 6m thick walls of rammed earth.

The founding of Susa corresponds with the abandonment of nearby villages.

Potts suggests that the city may have been founded to try to reestablish the previously destroyed settlement at Chogha Mish.

(Potts, Daniel T. (1999).

The archaeology of Elam: formation and transformation of an ancient Iranian state.

Cambridge University Press, 1999. pp.

490.)

Susa is firmly 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.

Susa may have been a colony of Uruk.

As such, the periodization of Susa corresponds to Uruk; Early Middle and Late Susa II periods (3800–3100 BCE) correspond to Early, Middle, and Late Uruk periods.By the middle Susa II period, the city has grown to 25 ha.Susa III (3100–2900 BCE) corresponds with Uruk III period.

Ambiguous reference to Elam appear also in this period in Sumerian records.

Susa enters history during the Early Dynastic period of Sumer.

A battle between Kish and Susa is recorded in 2700 BCE.Susa is the capital of a state called Šušan, which occupies approximately the same territory of modern Khūzestān Province centered on the Karun River.

Control of Šušan shifts between Elam, Sumer, and Akkad.

Šušan is sometimes mistaken as synonymous with Elam, but it is a distinctly separate cultural and political entity.

Šušan is incorporated by Sargon the Great into his Akkadian Empire in approximately 2330 BCE.

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