The Behistun Inscription is a multilingual Achaemenid royal inscription and large rock relief on a cliff at Mount Behistun in the Kermanshah Province of Iran, near the city of Kermanshah in western Iran, established by Darius the Great. It was important to the decipherment of cuneiform, as it is the longest known trilingual cuneiform inscription, written in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian.
Babylonia was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia. It emerged as an Akkadian populated but Amorite-ruled state c. 1894 BC. During the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was retrospectively called "the country of Akkad", a deliberate archaism in reference to the previous glory of the Akkadian Empire. It was often involved in rivalry with the older ethno-linguistically related state of Assyria in the north of Mesopotamia and Elam to the east in Ancient Iran. Babylonia briefly became the major power in the region after Hammurabi created a short-lived empire, succeeding the earlier Akkadian Empire, Third Dynasty of Ur, and Old Assyrian Empire. The Babylonian Empire rapidly fell apart after the death of Hammurabi and reverted to a small kingdom centered around the city of Babylon.
Susa 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 modern day Iran. One of the most important cities of the Ancient Near East, Susa served as the capital of Elam and the winter capital of Achaemenid Empire, and remained a strategic centre during the Parthian and Sasanian periods.
Elam was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of southern Iraq. The modern name Elam stems from the Sumerian transliteration elam(a), along with the later Akkadian elamtu, and the Elamite haltamti. Elamite states were among the leading political forces of the Ancient Near East. In classical literature, Elam was also known as Susiana, a name derived from its capital Susa.
Anshan modern Tall-e Malyan, also Tall-i Malyan, was an Elamite and ancient Persian city. It was located in the Zagros Mountains in southwestern Iran, approximately 46 kilometres (29 mi) north of Shiraz and 43 kilometres (27 mi) west of Persepolis in the Beyza/Ramjerd plain, in the province of Fars.
Behbahan, also Romanized as Behbahān and Behbehān, is a city in the Central District of Behbahan County, Khuzestan province, Iran, serving as capital of both the county and the district.
Khuzestan province is located in southwestern Iran. Its history extends from the pre-Aryan ancient Elamite civilization to the modern-day Islamic Republic.
The Proto-Elamite period, also known as Susa III, is a chronological era in the ancient history of the area of Elam, dating from c. 3100 BC to 2700 BC. In archaeological terms this corresponds to the late Banesh period. Proto-Elamite sites are recognized as the oldest civilization in the territory of present-day Iran. The Proto-Elamite script is an Early Bronze Age writing system briefly in use before the introduction of Elamite cuneiform.
Tepe Sialk is a large ancient archeological site in a suburb of the city of Kashan, Isfahan Province, in central Iran, close to Fin Garden. The culture that inhabited this area has been linked to the Zayandeh River Culture.
The Awan Dynasty was the first dynasty of Elam of which very little of anything is known today, appearing at the dawn of historical record. The Dynasty corresponds to the early part of the Old Elamite period, it was succeeded by the Shimashki Dynasty and later the Sukkalmah Dynasty. The Elamites were likely major rivals of neighboring Sumer from remotest antiquity; they were said to have been defeated by Enmebaragesi of Kish, who is the earliest archaeologically attested Sumerian king, as well as by a later monarch, Eannatum I of Lagash.
Marhaši was a 3rd millennium BC polity situated east of Elam, on the Iranian plateau, in Makran. It is known from Mesopotamian sources, but its precise location has not been identified, though some scholars link it with the Jiroft culture. Henri-Paul Francfort and Xavier Tremblay proposed identifying the kingdom of Marhashi with Ancient Margiana on the basis of the Akkadian textual and archaeological evidence.
The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, ancient Persia, Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. The ancient Near East is studied in the fields of ancient Near East studies, Near Eastern archaeology, and ancient history.
The prehistory of the Iranian plateau, and the wider region now known as Greater Iran, as part of the prehistory of the Near East is conventionally divided into the Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age periods, spanning the time from the first settlement by archaic humans about a million years ago until the beginning of the historical record during the Neo-Assyrian Empire, in the 8th century BC.
Kul-e Farah is an archaeological site and open-air sanctuary situated in the Zagros mountain valley of Izeh/Mālamir, in south-western Iran, around 800 meters over sea level. Six Elamite rock reliefs are located in a small gorge marked by a seasonal creek bed on the plain's east side of the valley, near the town of Izeh in Khuzestan.
Arrajan (Argan) was a medieval Persian city located between Fars and Khuzestan, which was settled since the civilisation of Elam in the second milennium BCE, and was important from the Sasanian Empire until the 11th century as the capital of a province of the same name that corresponds to present-day Behbahan in Khuzestan province, Iran.
Humban-haltash III or Umanaldash was the last major ruler of Elam. He was defeated and captured by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.
The Sukkalmah Dynasty, also Epartid Dynasty after the founder Eparti/Ebarat, was an early dynasty of West Asia in the ancient region of Elam, to the southeast of Babylonia. It corresponds to the latest part of the Old Elamite period.
The art of rock relief has been practiced by several civilizations during Iranian Antiquity since the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Iran, with 90 panels known in 2007 and distributed mainly in the provinces of Fars, Kurdistan, and Khuzestan, has the largest Middle Eastern concentration of ancient rock reliefs. This profusion is explained by the abundance of rock material in western Iran. It is also due to the fact that, drawing inspiration from its predecessors both for the choice of themes and for that of the sites, each new empire marks its advent by the realization of new panels and thus makes the art evolve. Although uniquely Iranian, this representative art form is constantly influenced from the outside.
