Susa

One of the leading cities of the ancient Near East and a capital of several nations and empires that controlled that region. Archaeological finds indicate that the site of Susa (modern Shush), located in southwestern Iran about 150 miles (241km) east of the Tigris River, was inhabited, probably as an agricultural village, as early as 7000 B. C. By the late fourth millennium B. C. it had become a city and served as the capital of Elam. The Elamites called it Susan.

Because there was frequent warfare between Elam and the kingdoms of neighboring Mesopotamia, Susa came under attack numerous times by the Babylonians and the Assyrians. The most devastating of these assaults occurred in the late seventh century b. c., when the warlike Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal (reigned ca. 668-627 B. C.) sacked the city. In a cuneiform tablet discovered by famed Assyriologist Austen Henry Layard, Ashurbanipal boasts:

Susa, the great holy city, abode of their [the Elamites’] Gods, seat of their mysteries, I conquered. I entered its palaces, I opened their treasuries where silver and gold, goods and wealth were amassed. . . . I destroyed the ziggurat of Susa. I smashed its shining copper horns. I reduced the temples of Elam to naught; their gods and goddesses I scattered to the winds.

The tombs of their ancient and recent kings I devastated, I exposed to the sun, and I carried away their bones toward the land of Ashur. I devastated the provinces of Elam and on their lands I sowed salt.

The Assyrian Empire soon fell, however, and Susa was rebuilt. The Neo-Babylonians controlled it for a while in the sixth century b. c. During this period, a Babylonian army transported large numbers of

Hebrews from Judah to Mesopotamia (the so-called Babylonian captivity), and some of these captives were resettled in Susa. According to the Old Testament books of Esther, Nehemiah, and Daniel, the title characters of these books dwelled in Susa, called Shushan by the Hebrews. Esther became the wife of the local ruler:

When Esther was taken to King Aha-suerus in his royal palace... the king loved Esther more than all the [local] women, and she found grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins, so that he set the royal crown [of the city] on her head and made her queen. (Esther 2.16-17)

The Hebrews were allowed to return to their homeland in Palestine under the next rulers of Susa, the Persians. The first Persian king, Cyrus II, captured the city in about 538 b. c. Susa became one of Persia’s three capitals under Cyrus’s son, Camby-ses. The city retained that lofty status for about two centuries, and then the Macedonian Greek conqueror Alexander the Great took Susa and demoted it in importance. However, under the Parthians, who wrested Iran and Mesopotamia from the Greeks, Susa became a capital once again. The Parthian kings summered in their western capital of Ctesiphon and wintered in their eastern capital of Susa. In a. d. 116 the Roman emperor Trajan captured Susa but was unable to maintain control of it for long. It became a Sassanian city in the following century. Finally, after a long and distinguished existence as a city, Susa was destroyed by an invading Muslim army in the year 638.

See Also: Assyrian Empire; Elam; Persian Empire