Teumman
a king of the ancient kingdom of Elam
705 BCE to 653 BCE
Teumman was a king of the ancient kingdom of Elam, ruling it from 664 to 653 BCE, contemporary with the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (668 – c. 627). In various sources, the name may be found spelled as Te’umman, Teumann, or Te-Umman. For a time, "many scholars, beginning with G.G. Cameron," believed him to have been the Tepti-Huban-Inshushinak mentioned in inscriptions, although this view has since fallen from favor.
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Ashurbanipal launched a devastating attack on Elam in 653. A text, written in 649, among the annals of Ashurbanipal, records Ashurbanipal's justifications for the war and its conclusion.
The first of these two reliefs depicts the death of the Elamite king, Teumman (also Teumann), and his son, Tammaritu, during the battle of Til-Tuba (River Ulai) in c. 653 BCE. Teumman had been waging war against Ashurbanipal, but during the battle, which Ashurbanipal decisively won, Teumman met his end.
The second relief depicts Ashurbanipal and his queen relaxing at a banquet while the head of Teumman hangs from a tree (far left). Ashurbanipal described his victory and the fate of his enemy:
"Like the onset of a terrible hurricane, I overwhelmed Elam in its entirety. I cut off the head of Teumann, their king, – the haughty one, who plotted evil. Countless of his warriors I slew. Alive, with my hands, I seized his fighters. With their corpses I filled the plain about Susa as with baltu and ashagu. Their blood I let run down the Ulai; its water I dyed red like wool."
Ashurbanipal also went on to destroy the Kingdom of Elam:
"I had the sanctuaries of the land Elam utterly destroyed and I counted its gods and its goddesses as ghosts… I destroyed and devastated the tombs of their earlier and later kings… I took their bones to Assyria. I prevented their ghosts from sleeping and deprived them of funerary-offerings and libations… On a march of one month and twenty-five days, I devastated the districts of the land Elam and scattered salt and cress over them."