Destruction_of_the_Elamite_city_of_Hamanu_645-635_BCE.jpg
The destruction of Hamanu of Elam by Ashurbanipal, 647 BC, relief. Photo supplied by Zereshk at english wikipedia.
Description:
A tablet unearthed in 1854 by Henry Austin Layard in Nineveh , reveals Ashurbanipal as an avenger seeking retribution for the humiliations the non-semitic Elamite Empire had inflicted on the semitic (thus unrelated) Mesopotamians over the centuries. Says Ashurbanipal:
- “Susa, the great holy city, abode of their Gods, seat of their mysteries, I conquered. I entered its palaces, I opened their treasuries where silver and gold, goods and wealth were amassed...the treasures of Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon that the ancient kings of Elam had looted and carried away. I destroyed the ziggurat of Susa. I smashed its shining copper horns. I reduced the temples of Elam to naught; their goods 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.”
See pages 7-8 of Persians: Masters of Empire ISBN: 0-80949104-4 for reference.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License , Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation ; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License . http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html GFDL GNU Free Documentation License true true |
|
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. | |
|
||
This licensing tag was added to this file as part of the GFDL licensing update . http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 true true |