Puzur-Inshushinak, 12th King of Awan 

It is only with Puzur-Inshushinak, the 12th and last king named in the AwKL, that we find an Elamite ruler who is well-documented in our surviving sources.  Importantly, he is securely named in a royal inscription of Ur-Namma, the first of the Ur III kings (traditionally 2112-2095 BC).  The inscription in question (RIME 3/2: 1: 1: 29) is known from an Old Babylonian copy that was found in the Mesopotamian city of Isin.  In the relevant passage, we read that Ur-Namma: 

1. “... mighty man, king of Ur, king of the lands of Sumer and Akkad, dedicated (this object) for [his] life.  At that time, the god Enlil gave (?) ... to the Elamites.   In the territory of highland Elam, they (Ur-Namma and the Elamites) drew up (lines) against one another for battle.  Their (??) king, Puzur-Inshushinak ... ”, (lines 1-15). 
   

As Daniel Potts (referenced below, 2021, at p. 2) observed, this inscription indicates that: 

1. “... around 2100 BC, [Ur-Namma] put an end to [what might have been only a] brief period of rule over eastern and central Babylonia by [Puzur-Inshushinak, ... whom Ur-Namma knew as the] ‘king of Elam’, ... thereby eliminating an apparently capable and energetic ruler and allowing for the reconquest of [Elam] following a ... period of independence from Mesopotamian rule after the collapse of the Kingdom of Akkad.”
   

I will return to this important inscription below: for the moment  we should simply note that:

1. ✴Puzur-Inshushinak almost certainly came to power in the so-called Gutian period; and
   

2. ✴his career apparently ended with his defeat by Ur-Namma in ca. 2100 BC.
   

This is represented in the first column in Table 36 of Walther Sallaberger and Ingo Schrakamp (referenced below, at p. 130), which is reproduced above.  

Thus, Puzur-Inshushinak’s reign came towards the end of a period of perhaps a century that Claudia Suter (referenced below, at p. 501) characterised as the interval between two ‘extraordinary hegemonies’ over the Sumerian city states (and beyond):

1. ✴that of the Akkadian dynasty established by Sargon,’king of the world’; and
   

2. ✴that of the Sumerian dynasty established by Ur-Namma, ‘mighty man, king of Ur, king of the lands of Sumer and Akkad’ (see below).
   

As noted above:

1. ✴it was probably the Akkadian governor Epir-Muri who had first rebelled against his over-lord, thereby ‘liberating’ Awan/ Elam; and
   

2. ✴he was probably followed by a series of ‘native’ rulers, including any or all of Hishebrateb, Hi.elu and Hit’a (respectively the 9th, 10th and 11th king named in the AwKL).
   

This brings us back to Puzur-Inshushinak: as Daniel Potts (referenced below, 2021, at p. 1) observed: 

1. “In a number of his [surviving] inscriptions, Puzur-Inshushinak identifies himself as the son of Shimpi-Ishhuk.  As the latter does not appear in the [AwKL], it may be that Puzur-Inshushinak’s father was not a king, and that ... Puzur-Inshushinak was a usurper or at least not a lineal descendant of his predecessor.”   
   

Puzur-Inshushinak’s Inscriptions from Susa 

* Numbers in this column are the museum identifiers (for example, Sb. 54) 

** LE = Linear Elamite: the letters in this column locate them within the 

corpus of Linear Elamite inscriptions published by François Desset et. al. (referenced below, at p. 16) 

*** Where there are two texts on the inscribed object, these are the titles in the Akkadian versions  

**** Primary source for the full Akkadian inscription: title mighty king of Awan  

***** Primary sources for the full Akkadian inscription: title mighty king of Awan and the four quarters

This discussion of Puzur-Inshushinak’s career begins with an analysis of his own surviving inscriptions, all of which were discovered at Susa and are now in the Musée du Louvre.  Javier Álvarez-Mon (referenced below, Table 1, at p. 172) usefully split the most important of them into three groups, in which Puzur-Inshushinak was styled (respectively) as:

1. ✴governor (ensi) of Susa;
   

2. ✴governor (ensi) of Susa [and] shagina (= KISH.NITA) of the land of Elam; and 
   

3. ✴mighty king of Awan.  
   

The table above summarises the inscriptions within these three categories. 

Linear Elamite 

Votive tablet of Puzur-Inshushinak from Susa, now in the Musée du Louvre (Sb. 17)

Image from the museum website

Almost all of the inscribed objects in the table above carry an inscription in Akkadian cuneiform: as Florence Malbran-Labat (referenced below, 2021, at pp. 1316-7) observed:

1. “In the current state of our knowledge, this was ... the main written language in Elam until the mid-2nd millennium BC.  It was the language of the conquerors, when the Sumero-Akkadian kings captured Susiana and installed garrisons and administrative services there ...  [and], above all, the language of Susiana, from where most of the [known Elamite] documents in Akkadian come from ...”
   

However, in almost half of the cases summarised in the table, the object in question carried a second inscription, this time in what is now known as Linear Elamite.  Florence Malbran-Labat (referenced below, 2018, at p. 466) saw Puzur-Inshushinak’s use of Linear Elamite alongside Akkadian cuneiform as part of: 

1. “... a program that was probably nationalist ...”; and
   

Javier Álvarez-Mon (referenced below, at p. 170) characterised Linear Elamite as: 

1. “... the presumed ‘national’ language of the Awanite kingdom.”  
   

As recently as 2018, Florence Malbran- Labat (as above) observed that, at her time of writing:

1. “We know approximately 20 inscriptions in Linear Elamite, including 19 excavated at Susa ... , one at Shahdad in Kerman ... ; and another in the region of Anshan ...”
   

However, in 2022, when François Desset and his colleagues (referenced below, Table 1, at pp. 16-19) published the corpus of these inscriptions, it comprised:

1. ✴the inscriptions to which Florence Malbran-Labat had referred (as entries A-U in the corpus), almost all of which were from Susa; and 
   

2. ✴another 19 inscriptions (V-Z and A’-O’).
   

Interestingly, they established (at p. 15) that:

1. ✴within the first group  (mostly from Susa):
   

2. •four inscriptions (O and then J-L) probably pre-dated Puzur-Inshushinak, and
   

3. •another 11 (P;  A-I; and U) were ‘royal’ inscriptions of Puzur-Inshushinak; and
   

4. ✴within the second group, which came from a wider area (see the map at Figure 1, p. 12), a set of 8 inscriptions on silver beakers from Kam-Firuz (some 40 km north of Anshan) date to the subsequent Shimashki and early Sukkalmaḫ periods (discussed on the following page).
   

In other words:

1. ✴although Puzur-Inshushinak did not introduce the tradition of using Linear Elamite in inscriptions, he certainly made considerable use of it at Susa; and
   

2. ✴the use of Linear Elamite for inscriptions, including ‘royal’ inscriptions, continued in Elam for a period after his death.
   

François Desset et al. (referenced below, at p. 24) pointed out that, before their additions to corpus of the Linear Elamite inscriptions:

1. “... attempts at deciphering Linear Elamite focused on the textual corpus of [Puzur-Inshushinak], which consists of both cuneiform inscriptions (in the Akkadian language) and LE texts, sometimes even occurring together on the same object.  Unfortunately, the LE texts never translate the cuneiform inscriptions (or vice versa); the two sets of texts just share some proper nouns and some titles that can be considered to be identical or equivalent.  As a consequence, only a few sign sequences corresponding to proper nouns could be identified ...” 
   

In an earlier paper, François Desset (referenced below, at pp. 402-6) had pointed out that, within the LE inscriptions of Puzur-Inshushinak::

1. “... the complete LE text A [on the ‘lion tablet’ illustrated above] is exceptional  since it is written on the same stone slab as a complete cuneiform Akkadian inscription recording notably the names of Inshushinak, Puzur- Inshushinak, Susa and [Shimpi-Ishhuk] ...
   

Desset et al. were able to extend our understanding of LE much further by concentrating  on the texts from Kam-Firuz (above), and they used this new information to decipher the LE texts from a group of 3 inscriptions of Puzur-Inshushinak (F-H, see below),  Open access editions of all the known LE inscriptions are apparently forthcoming (see p. 16), which means that we may soon learn more about the corpus of Puzur-Inshushinak’s inscriptions at Susa.

Puzur-Inshushinak, Ensi of Susa

Statue of Narundi from Susa, now in the Musée du Louvre (Sb. 54 + Sb 6617)

Image from the museum website 

As set out in the table above, the Akkadian inscriptions of Puzur-Inshushinak on three objects from Susa style him as ‘ensi’ of Susa (tout court): the objects in question are:

1. ✴the  statue of the goddess usually identified as Narundi illustrated above: and
   

2. ✴two other, less impressive objects (Sb. 123 and Sb. 134) that had probably served as door sockets.
   

Javier Álvarez-Mon (referenced below, at p. 181) translated the Akkadian text on the statue as follows:

1. “To Narunte (restored - see below), [I am] Puzur-Inshushinak, governor of Susa (ensi2 shushinki): Oh you (my prayer) with your ears, may you be able (to [hear]).  My judgement(?), judge !” 
   

The identification of ‘Narunte’ here was based on a reading of the Elamite text (I) on the statue, and is thus uncertain until modern decipherment becomes available (Note, for example, that François Desset et al., referenced below, at p. 16, entry I, refer to this object as simply a ‘goddess statue’).  However, there is some contextual support for this identification in the fact that, as as Javier Álvarez-Mon (referenced below, at p. 180 and Plate 2) recorded, the statue was found to the south of the temple of Ninhursag, which (as we have seen) had probably been built over a cult site of Narundi that had existed at the time of Eshpum.  Álvarez-Mon also recorded (in Table III, at p. 194) the frequent mentions of Narundi in Puzur-Inshushinak’s inscriptions.  None of this proves that this statue portrayed Narundi, but it does arguably make it very likely. 

Walther Sallaberger and Ingo Schrakamp (referenced below, at p. 123) articulated the commonly-held view that: 

1. “The change of titles in Puzur-Inshushinak’s inscriptions reflect the chronology of his cursus honorum: i.e., his rise: 
   

2. ✴from local ruler of Susa ... ; to 
   

3. ✴overlord of Elam and [king of Awan]”. 
   

However, this hypothesis is open to question, not least because we know nothing about the way that Puzur-Inshushinak represented himself to his ‘subjects’ outside Susa.  Furthermore, it seems unlikely that a man who began his career as ‘local ruler of Susa’ would introduce Linear Elamite (the putative ‘language of the Awanite kingdom’) alongside the traditional Akkadian in some of his later ‘royal’ inscriptions there.   In fact, as Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2013, at pp. 293-4) pointed out: 

1. “The origins of Puzur-Inshushinak are still obscure.  Given the fact that his father’s name is Elamite, he must have been of Elamite origin. ... [If so, we must] assume that he adopted his personal name only after he had come to Susa, in recognition of the local cult of Inshushinak.” 
   

It seems to me quite likely that, having risen to power in Awan (by whatever means), the son of Shimpi-Ishhuk extended his territory to include Susa, after which, in order to accommodate the religious and political sensibilities of of his recently-acquired subjects, he:

1. ✴adopted the name ‘Puzur Inshushinak’;
   

2. ✴made this dedication  to the ‘local’ goddess Narundi (following the earlier example of Esphum); and
   

3. ✴adopted the ‘traditional’ title ‘ensi of Susa’. 
   

Puzur-Inshushinak, Ensi of Susa and Shagina of the Land of Elam  

Puzur-Inshushinak is styled as ensi of Susa and shagina of the land of Elam in the majority of the Akkadian inscriptions summarised in the table above.  As we have seen, each of these titles had previously been used by at least one Akkadian governor of ‘Elam’: 

1. ✴Eshpum had been ensi of Elam;
   

2. ✴Ili-ishmani had been shagina of Elam’; and
   

3. ✴Epir-mupi had been ensi of Susa and shagina of Elam. 
   

As Daniel Potts (referenced below, 2021, at p. 1) pointed out: 

1. “By the time of Puzur-Inshushinak, ... the Kingdom of Akkad and ... [its] hold over Susa and other parts of southwestern Iran [were obviously] no more.  Nevertheless, Puzur-Inshushinak may have adopted these familiar titles because they conferred [on him] a measure of legitimacy”. 
   

I defer further discussion of this subject until after an analysis of what else we know Puzur-Inshushinak’s career. 

Puzur-Inshushinak, Mighty King of Awan 

Reconstruction by Beatrice André and Mirjo Salvini (referenced below, at p. 68) of the relative positions of

some of the surviving fragments of the Akkadian inscriptions on the putative steps of Inshushinak at Susa

Sb numbers relate to the numbers of the steps in the Musée du Louvre  

Beatrice André and Mirjo Salvini (referenced below, at pp. 62-3) discussed 13 (mostly fragmentary) limestone slabs from Susa in the Musée du Louvre, each of which carried an Akkadian inscription on one of its four longer faces.   They noted that two of them (Sb 156 and Sb 149 - see the illustration above) had apparently carried overlapping parts of the same text, which they translated into French (as a composite) as follows: 

1. “To (his) Lord, [I am] Puzur-Inshushinak, mighty king of Awan, son of Shimpi-Ishhuk.  [In] the year in which Inshushinak looked upon [me] and gave [me] the four quarters to govern, [I] built [this] staircase ...”, (at p. 65, my translation of their French). 
   

In the  rest of the text, Puzur-Inshushinak called on the deities Inshushinak, Shamash and Nergal to punish anyone who damaged the inscription.  This text had thus been inscribed on the vertical faces of two steps in a monumental staircase that Puzur-Inshushinak, now styled as mighty king of Awan, had built in the ‘year in which Inshushinak gave me the four  quarters [of the world] to govern’.  André and Salvini argued (at p.66 - see also Figure 8 at p. 67) that six other fragmentary steps in the museum (Sb. 137, 153, 18451, 18453, 18454 and 18458) each carried part of the same text and had probably belonged to the same flight of stairs. 

André and Salvini then described (at p. 66) part of a much larger step (Sb. 151) in the museum that might have come from another staircase.  The text was a variant of the text above:

1. ✴it explicitly identified Inshushinak as the lord of Puzur-Inshushinak in line 1; and
   

2. ✴more importantly, it lacked the reference to the ‘four quarters’: as they observed (at p. 70), Puzur-Inshushinak was styled here as: 
   

3. “... ‘mighty king of Awan’, without any mention of the year name.”
   

The last lines of this text, which presumably contained a curse, were missing.  They identified: 

1. ✴three other fragmentary steps in the museum (Sb. 150, 157 and 18455) that were smaller than Sb. 151 but began with the same text at line 1; and 
   

2. ✴another (Sb. 18452) that carried the text of a curse that differed from the one in  Sb. 156 but might have replicated the now-missing curse of Sb. 151. 
   

Thus, all five of these slabs could have carried the same text, and they had perhaps all belonged to a second staircase. 

Finally, André and Salvini drew attention (at p. 68) to the unpublished text on yet another limestone step in the museum ( Sb 157), which:

1. “... contains the most significant [text] variation ... While all [13 texts discussed above] give Puzur-Inshushinak the royal title da-num LUGAL za!/a-wa-anki [(mighty king of Awan)], a title that  does not exist on any of his other monuments, [Sb. 157], although very damaged, allows us to read:
   

2. ✴line 4: Puzur4 Insh[shshinak]; and
   

3. ✴lines 5-6: en[si] shush[in(a)ki].
   

4. Line 7 is double, and we must expect the expression ‘shakkanakkku sha mati Elam(tim)ki’, [since this is the only likely title] that can be restored before the patronymic of line 8 ...”, (my translation).
   

Thus, we have 14 Akkadian ‘step’ inscriptions that implied three different titles for Puzur-Ishushinak (see André and Salvini, referenced below, note 35, at pp. 70-1):

1. ✴ensi of Susa and shakkanakkku of the land of Elam (Sb. 157);
   

2. ✴mighty king of Awan (Sb. 151, and probably SB. 150, 157, 18452 and 18455); and 
   

3. ✴mighty king of Awan and the four quarters (Sb. 156, and probably Sb 137, 149, 153, 18451, 18453, 18454 and 18458).
   

Puzur-Inshushinak, King of Awan  (Tout Court)

Sketches by Beatrice André and Mirjo Salvini (referenced below, Figures 5-7, at p. 62)  of  

three Linear Elamite inscriptions from Susa 

Sb numbers relate to the numbers of the steps in the Musée du Louvre

Beatrice André and Mirjo Salvini (referenced below, at pp. 62-4) discussed three limestone slabs from Susa in the Musée du Louvre (F (Sb. 155); G (Sb. 139); and H (Sb. 140A)), each of which carries a Linear Elamite inscription on one of its four longer faces.  At their time of writing (1989), it was not possible to decipher these inscriptions.  However, François Desset et. al. (referenced below, in the Appendix at at pp. 55-7) returned to them in the light of the recent advances discussed above.  They observed (at p. 55) that:

1. “Despite some variants, they basically represent the same text, which can be almost completely reconstructed on the basis of these three exemplars.”
   

They then offered the following composite translation (at p. 56):

1. “Puzur-Sushinak, king of Awan, (the one begotten by Shin-pishuk)/ Insushinak loves him, (therefore) (the city of) Huposhan, the … — he (= Insushinak) burnt, enslaved under him (and)/ presented to him.  Whoever rebels … may it (this) be destroyed (or: realised)”. 
   

As we shall see, his is probably our earliest evidence for Puzur-Inshushinak’s use of the title king of Awan at Susa.  

Beatrice André and Mirjo Salvini (referenced below, at p. 69 and note 33) suggested that each of these slabs had probably belonged to one or other of the monumental staircases discussed in the previous section.   (They supported this assumption by observing that each of the other known LE inscriptions appeared alongside an Akkadian one.  However, this is a circular argument.)  In fact, while they may well have belonged to a monumental staircase, the recently deciphered inscriptions suggest that the monument in question celebrated Puzur-Inshushinak’s destruction of the city of Huposhan. 

Puzur-Inshushinak’s Inscriptions from Susa: Interim Conclusions

Any firm conclusions from the data discussed above is obviated by the fact that:

1. ✴all of the surviving inscriptions of Puzur-Inshushinak were discovered more than a century ago in poorly documented locations at Susa;
   

2. ✴modern editions of the Akkadian texts are largely lacking; and
   

3. ✴we await the imminent publication of most of the relevant Linear Elamite texts.
   

However, the recent decipherment of the LE texts F-H throws new light on the way that Puzur-Inshushinak’s titulary evolved during his career, as I discuss further below. 

Puzur-Inshushinak’s Career  

Phasing of the conquests of Puzur-Inshushinak proposed by Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2013),  

summarised in his Figure 1, at p. 315 (reproduced here) 

I: Kimash and Hurti; II: Diyala region; III: Northern Mesopotamia     

I argued above that the evidence from Puzur-Inshushinak ‘s surviving inscriptions suggests that he began his career by taking power (by whatever means) in the territory around Awan (which the Akkadians knew as Elam) and that he subsequently incorporated Susa into his domain.  It is likely that, on his arrival in Susa, he assumed the Akkadian titles of ensi of Susa (ensi2 shushinki) and governor of Elam (shagina Elamki).  Furthermore, the sheer volume of evidence for his reign there suggests that it became his political and religious capital.

As we have seen, Puzur-Inshushinak’s rise to power in Elam took place at a time when:

the Gutians had taken control of much of what had been Akkadian territory: and

the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Lagash to the south had had regained their independence. 

It is therefore unsurprising that he was also drawn into this region.  Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2013) delineated three separate phases in his expansion in this direction:

1. ✴It began with a campaign in the Zagros Mountains [Phase 1 in the map above], aimed at Kimash and Hurti:
   

2. “... two places [that] can quite confidently be located along the Great Khurasan Road, in the general vicinity of the modern towns of Islamabad-e Gharb and Khermanshah”, (see p.  294).
   

3. ✴Thereafter:
   

4. “... the conquest of Kimash and Hurti ... made it possible for Puzur-Inshushinak to move:
   

5. •into the Diyala Region [Phase 2]; and then
   

6. •into northern Mesopotamia ... [Phase 3]”, (see p. 295).
   

I have structured the discussion below around this three-phase model. 

Phase 1: Kimash, Hurti, Hupsana and the Shimashki 

Puzur-Inshushinak’s Victory Statue (Sb. 55)

Side view of the lower part of a statue of a man wearing sandals, from Susa, now in the Musée du Louvre (Sb. 55) 

Image from the museum website  

A now incomplete statue of a seated man wearing sandals from Susa (Sb. 55, illustrated above) carries what Javier Álvarez Mon (referenced below, at p. 180) characterised as: 

1. “A large inscription in Akkadian celebrating [Puzur-Inshushinak’s] victories, ... [which] covers the side of  [his] robe and the upper part of the square seat.  A replica of this inscription existed on a victory stele preserved in two fragments that were stolen at Susa as they were about to be transported to France.”
   

The inscription begins: 

1. “Puzur-Inshushinak, the ruler (ishshiak) of Susa, general (shakkanak) of the land of Elam, son of Shimpi-Ishhuk: when Kimash and Hurti became hostile to him, he went and captured his enemies ...”, (translated by Daniel Patterson, referenced below, at p. 191). 
   

In regard to these two titles: 

1. ✴the Akkadian term ishshakku (older ishshiakkum) is a loan word from Sumerian ensi(k) - see Thorkild Jacobsen (referenced below, at p. 113) ; and
   

2. ✴the Akkadian title shakkanakku is the equivalent of the Sumerian shagina - see Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2004, at pp. 176-7). 
   

The inscription then recorded that Puzur-Inshushinak:

1. “... destroyed Hupsana and crushed under his feet in one day 81 [?] towns and regions ...”, (translated by Daniel Potts, referenced below, 2016, entry 1 in Table 4.12, at p. 113).
   

Melissa Eppihimer (referenced below, 2019, at p. 128) pointed out that scholars still debate whether Puzur-Inshushinak:

1. ✴re-purposed an Akkadian ‘royal’ statue here (in her words, ‘physical appropriation’); or
   

2. ✴simply followed the Akkadian tradition for statues of this kind (in her words, ‘visual appropriation’).
   

She did not offer her own opinion, but she observed (at p. 199) that, in either case, the Akkadian model of kingship was clearly central to Puzur-Inshushinak’s approach to ‘self-presentation’ at this stage in his career.  Interestingly, he still used the traditional titles of an Akkadian governor at this time (at least in this Akkadian inscription from Susa).

LE ‘Step’ Inscriptions (F-H, again)

The inscription on Sb. 55 is the only surviving Akkadian inscription of Puzur-Inshushinak that relates to a military campaign.  However, as we have seen, François Desset et. al. (referenced below, in the Appendix at at p. 56) recently published a composite translation of the P Elamite inscriptions on three limestone steps from Susa (now in the Musée du Louvre: Sb. 155; Sb. 139; and Sb. 140A) as follows: 

1. “Puzur-Sushinak, king of Awan, (the one begotten by Shin-pishuk)/ Insushinak loves him, (therefore) (the city of) Huposhan, the … — he (= Insushinak) burnt, enslaved under him (and)/ presented to him.  Whoever rebels … may it (this)  be destroyed (or: realised)”. 
   

As the translators observed (at p. 57) ‘Huposhan’ here corresponds with the Akkadian ‘Hupsana’ of Sb. 55. 

Since this inscription commemorates Puzur-Inshushinak’s victory in the Zagros, it is probably our earliest evidence for his use of the title king of Awan at Susa.   In this context, we should look at the final lines of the inscription of the seated statue (above): after his victories in the Zagros:

1. “... when the king of Shimashki came to him, he (the unnamed king) grabbed his (Puzur-Inshushinak’s) feet; Inshushinak heard his prayers and ... ”, (translated by Daniel Potts, referenced below, 2016, entry 1 in Table 4.12, at p. 113).
   

Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2013, at p. 302) observed that this passage contains the earliest surviving record of the existence of a king of Shimashki (and, indeed, of the name of Shimashki itself).   He argued that: 

1. “The facts that Puzur-Inshushinak attached so much importance to his encounter with the unnamed ruler of Shimashki and recognised him as a ‘king’ must [indicate] that this individual was [an important] political figure in his own right, whose power, while inferior to that of Puzur-Inshushinak, was something to be reckoned with.”  
   

I discuss the history of the ‘Shimashkian dynasty’ on the following page: for the moment, we should note that:

1. ✴by the time that Puzur-Inshushinak destroyed Hupsana and received the submission of the king of Shimashki, he was almost certainly recognised as  king of Awan, at least in the Elamite highlands; and
   

2. ✴given this success, he now felt able to use this title (at least in his LE inscriptions) at Susa.
   

Victory Statue Attributed to Puzur-Inshushinak (Sb. 48 + Sb. 9101)

‘Victory statue’ from the Temple of Inshushinak at Susa, attributed to Puzur-Inshushinak 

Now in the Musée du Louvre (Sb. 48 + Sb 9101), image of Sb 48 from the museum website   

Interestingly, the iconography of another limestone  ‘victory statue’ (Sb. 48 + Sb 9101, illustrated above) suggests that it too belongs to the ‘Phase 1’ period.  The statue depicts the lower part of a bare-footed (and now unidentified) man who stands on a base that carries reliefs of four naked corpses, each of whom was originally identified by an Akkadian inscription: two of these inscriptions identify an ensi of ‘Akukuni’ and an ensi of ‘Nirab’. 

Melissa Eppihimer (referenced below, 2019, at p. 129) pointed out that scholars originally assumed that this was:

1. “... an Akkadian royal statue depicting the king’s defeated enemies beneath his feet.”
   

However, she observed that, in some respects, this statue departs from Akkadian precedent, not least in that the statue is made from limestone (as, for example is Sb. 55) and the ruler’s feet are housed:

1. “... within a niche, a feature absent from the [known] Manishtushu and Naram-Sin standing stature.”
   

She acknowledged that it could still be an Akkadian royal statue, perhaps made in a non-Akkadian workshop, but she argued that it could also be:

1. “... a post-Akkadian statue (possibly of Puzur-Inshusinak) that adhere to an Akkadian prototype.”
   

Javier Álvarez Mon (referenced below) was less circumspect: he identified:

1. ✴the standing figure as Puzur Inshushinak (see the title at p. 176 and the references to ‘Puzur-Inshushinak’s robe’ at p. 178 and p. 179); and
   

2. ✴the corpses below his feet as those of defeated Zagros highlanders (see p. 177).
   

If this characterisation of the enemy is correct, then this second statue would also relate to Puzur-Inshushinak’s victories in Phase 1.  Álvarez Mon argued (at p. 177) argued that that one of the best visual analogies to the iconography of Sb. 48 are provided by the Sippar stele of Naram Sin (Sb. 4), which depicts his victory over the Lullubi in the Zagros mountains, which strongly suggests that, in this triumphal image, Puzur-Inshushinak was (probably consciously) emulating Naram-Sin’s royal imagery. 

Phase 1: Kimash, Hurti, Hupsana and the Shimashki: Conclusions 

Puzur-Inshushinak celebrated his victory over the (otherwise unknown) polity of Huposhan/ Hupsana by erecting the following victory monuments at Susa:

1. ✴a seated statue with a triumphal Akkadian inscription;
   

2. ✴a now-lost victory stele with the same inscription;
   

3. ✴a now-anepigraphic standing statue in which he crushed the corpses of his enemies underfoot; and
   

4. ✴a now-unknown victory monument that was approached by the ‘LE steps’.
   

This was obviously no ‘ordinary’ victory: 

1. ✴judging by the ‘Akkadian’ iconography of his statues, he  probably portrayed himself to his subjects at Susa as a ‘new Naram-Sin’; 
   

2. ✴it clearly impressed and intimidated the neighbouring king of Shimashki, who became his vassal. 
   

In these circumstances, we should not be surprised that he now felt sufficiently secure to style himself as king of Awan at Susa (at least on the the ‘LE steps’). 

Phase 2: Diyala Region and Akkad 

This region is named for the Diyala river, which rises in the Zagros mountains and flows into the Tigris at a point slightly to the south of modern Baghdad.  We have no evidence for the circumstances in which Puzur-Inshushinak gained control of this region, but as Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2013, at p. 295 ) pointed out:

1. “According to one of Ur-Namma’s inscriptions, which describes his conflict with Puzur-Inshushinak, the latter occupied the cities of ... [the Diyala region].”
   

This is a reference to the so-called Isin inscription (touched on above).  The full text records that:

1. “(I), Ur-Namma, mighty man, king of Ur, king of the lands of Sumer and Akkad, dedicated (this object) for my  life.  At that time, the god Enlil gave (?) ... to the Elamites.   In the territory of highland Elam, they (Ur-Namma and the Elamites) drew up (lines) against one another for battle.  Their (??) king, Puzur-Inshushinak, ... (the cities of) Awal, Kismar, Mashkan-sharrum, the lands of Eshnunna, the lands of Tuttub, the lands of Simudar, the lands of Akkad, all the people ...”, (RIME 3/2: 1: 1: 29, lines 11-23; see also the translation by Douglas Frayne, referenced below, 2008b, at p. 3).
   

Although it is not absolutely clear from the (now-lacunose) inscription, it seems that Ur-Namma claimed to have ‘liberated’ the territories listed here from Puzur-Inshushinak before confronting him in the Elamite highlands. 

Walther Sallaberger and Ingo Schrakamp (referenced below, at p. 123) observed that:

1. “Puzur-Inshushinak’s military operation [in Steinkeller’s Phase 2] was directed against the eastern alluvium, the Diyala region and the land Akkad, ... [a region that] was still under Akkadian dominion even under Shu-Durul, [the last king of Akkad]; therefore, Puzur-Inshushinak must have gained control of Akkad thereafter.” 
   

This situation is represented in the first column of their Table 36 (reproduced above), in which Puzur-Inshushinak:

1. ✴took over Akkad and norther Mesopotamia (see below) after the reign of king Shu-Dural of Akkad; and
   

2. ✴held it until he was driven out by king Ur-Namma of Ur. 
   

This table also reflects (in the next column) the contemporaneous expulsion of  king Tirigan of the Gutians from Adab by king Utu-hegal of Uruk: one of Utu-hegal’s royal inscriptions (known from three later Babylonian copies) recorded that:

1. “The god Enlil, lord of the foreign lands, commissioned Utu-hegal, the mighty man, king of Uruk, king of the four quarters, the king whose utterance cannot be countermanded, to destroy [the Gutian] name”, (RIME 2: 13: 6: 4, CDLI P433096, lines 15-21).
   

As Douglas Frayne (referenced below, 1993, at p. 280) observed:

1. “Noteworthy is the king's adoption of the title 'king of the four quarters' [in this inscription, a title that was] last used by Narim-Sin and the Gutian ruler Erridu-pizir [mentioned above].”
   

Piotr Steinkeller(referenced below, 2013, at p. 296) reasonably argued that:  

1. “We will be justified in assuming ... that it was as a result of his capture of Akkad that Puzur-Inshushinak [also] felt entitled to adopt these two designations, [‘mighty’ and ‘king of the four quarters’], for himself.” 
   

As noted above, the implied title ‘mighty king of Awan and the four quarters‘ appeared in an Akkadian inscription on at least one monumental step (Sb. 156) from Susa and it probably also appeared on seven other (Sb 137, 149, 153, 18451, 18453, 18454 and 18458).  It therefore seems likely that these steps belonged to one or more monuments that celebrated Puzur-Inshushinak’s conquest of the Diyala region and particularly his conquest of Akkad. 

Phase 3: Marda, Girkal and Kazallu (?)

Map of Mesopotamia and Elam in the Gutian Period

Adapted from Walther Sallaberger and Ingo Schrakamp (referenced below, Map 13, at p. 126 (my additions in colour)

Yellow = Steinkeller Phase 1; Green = Steinkeller Phase 2; Blue = Steinkeller Phase 3 

Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2013, at p. 295) argued that: 

1. “The prologue to Ur-Namma’s [law] code adds to the list [of Puzur-Inshushinak’s conquests] the northern Babylonian cities of Marda, Girkal, Kazallu ...”,
   

The relevant passage has been translated as follows:

1. “At that time, by the might of Nanna, my lord, I liberated Akshak, Marad, Girkal, Kazallu  and their settlements, as well as Usarum, which had been enslaved by Anshan”, (RIME 3/2: 1: 1: 20, CDLI, P432130, lines 117-34: see also Martha Roth, referenced below, at p. 16 and Piotr Michalowski, referenced below, at p. 185).  
   

Steinkeller assumed that ‘Anshan’ here meant Puzur-Inshushinak, from which it followed that Puzur-Inshushinak’s conquests in the Diyala Region (Phase 2) had enabled him to go on to conquer much of  northern Mesopotamia (Phase 3).  However, Piotr Michalowski, referenced below, at p. 184), who had seen a pre-print of Steinkeller’s paper (see his note 25, at p. 183) argued that:

1. “... it is only speculation that Puzur-Inshushinak was still on the throne at the time that the armies of Ur repulsed the [Anshanites] from that part of Babylonia, since the only text that testifies to this action (the Ur-Namma [law code]) does not mention any foreign ruler by name.”
   

Thus, before proceeding on this basis, we should consider the robustness of Steinkeller’s assumption that Puzur-Inshushinak controlled Anshan at the time of Ur-Namma’s expulsion of the Anshanites from northern Mesopotamia.

Anshan at the Time of Puzur-Inshushinak 

As we have seen, the Akkadian king Manishutush (ca. 2300 BC) conquered Anshan, after which he presumably incorporated it into the Akkadian province of Elam.  The next mention of Anshan in our surviving sources comes in the inscription on a statue (known to scholars as Statue B) of Gudea, the independent ensi of Lagash during the Gutian period.  The inscription on this statue, which is now in the Musée du Louvre (AO 2), records that Gudea: 

1. “... conquered the ‘city of Anshan and (the land of) Elam’ (or perhaps the ‘cities of Anshan and Elam’) and brought its booty to Ningirsu, in (his temple) E-ninnu”, (RIME 3/1.01.07, St B composite, lines vi: 64-8; see also Piotr Steinkeller, 2013, pp. 298-9 and note 40).  
   

Since Gudea was not in the habit of publicising his military successes (indeed, this is the only known inscription in which he did so), we can be reasonably certain that his claim of conquests made in Anshan and Elam should be accepted. 

Unfortunately, the dating of Gudea’s reign is still debated.  For example, Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2013) believed that he was still ruling Lagash when Ur-Namma invaded the Elamite highlands (see the Isin inscription above), and argued (at p. 298) that: 

1. “The most likely assumption is that Gudea and Ur-Namma had formed a military alliance against Puzur-Inshushinak, ... [albeit that] we have no direct confirmation of this [hypothesis] so far.” 
   

However, Walther Sallaberger and Ingo Schrakamp (referenced below):

1. ✴observed (at p. 121) that: 
   

2. “... a new critical evaluation of the archival evidence provided by Steinkeller ... revealed that the [relative dating of Gudea and Ur-Namma] was not as clear as had been assumed”;
   

3. ✴having analysed the relevant evidence, concluded (at p. 122) that: 
   

4. “... Gudea has to be dated earlier [than Ur-Namma, although] perhaps his last year(s) overlapped with the beginning of Ur-Namma’s reign.”  
   

In other words, it is likely that Gudea’s conquest of Anshan and Elam preceded Ur-Namma’s expulsion of:

1. ✴Puzur-Insushinak from Akkad and the Diyala region; and
   

2. ✴the Anshanites from the region around Akshak, Marad, and Kazallu. 
   

On this basis, both Puzur-Inshushinak and the Anshanites:

1. ✴regained their independence from Gudea;
   

2. ✴subsequently expanded into Mesopotamia; and
   

3. ✴remained there until they were driven out by Ur-Namma.
   

However:

1. ✴there is no surviving evidence that Puzur-Inshushinak ever extended his territory as far east as Anshan; and
   

2. ✴the evidence that does survive suggests that Ur-Namma expelled Puzur-Inshushinak and the Anshanites from Mesopotamia on different occasions.
   

Phase 3: Marda, Girkal and Kazallu (?): Conclusions 

In my view, we should accept Ur-Namma’s testimony at face value: at some time before the publication of his law code, he had liberated ‘Akshak, Marad, Girkal, Kazallu  and their settlements, as well as Usarum’ from the subjugation of a ruler of Anshan.  I doubt that Ur-Namma would have written that the places had subjugated by ‘Anshan’ if he meant ‘Puzur-Inshushinak’ (to whom he referred by name and as the king of the Elamites in the Isin inscription): 

1. ✴It is, of course, possible that this Anshanite ruler had accepted Puzur-Inshushinak as his overlord (as was the case, for example, for an unnamed king of Shimashki): if so, then he could have fought alongside Puzur-Inshushinak and been rewarded by a grant of land that the allied army had captured in northern Mesopotamia. 
   

2. ✴However, without evidence to the contrary, we should probably assume this putative ruler of Anshan made his Mesopotamian conquests independently of Puzur-Inshushinak, and that his (or a successor’s) expulsion by Ur-Namma post-dated Puzur-Inshushinak’s demise.
   

As we have seen, Puzur-Inshushinak’s father, Shimpi-Ishhuk, is not named in the AwKL.  It is therefore possible that:

Gudea deposed Hit’a, the 11th king named  in the list; and

at some time thereafter, Puzur-Inshushinak:

established his power base in Awan/ Elam by expelling Gudea (or another non-Elamite ruler); and

subsequently took Susa, adopting the ‘traditional’ Akkadian titles of ensi of Susa and shagina of the land of Elam. 

It is also possible that he took Anshan (either at this time or on a later occasion), but there is no surviving evidence that he did so. 

On the basis of this earlier dating of Gudea’s reign we must place Puzur-Inshushinak’s control of the Elamite highlands in a period that:

began at some time after the invasion of Gudea; and

ended with the invasion of Ur-Namma.

As we have seen, Puzur-Inshushinak was ultimately unable to hold on to his conquests outside Elam:  Ur- Namma, having united southern Mesopotamia, drove him out of the Diyala Region before engaging with him in battle ‘in the territory of highland Elam’.  Unfortunately we have no direct evidence for the outcome of that engagement.   However, an important paper by Gianni Marchesi (referenced below, 2013) throws some light on this problem: he re-published the inscriptions on two ‘forgotten’ fragments of vases from Ur (CBS 14934 and CBS 14935) that are now in the Penn Museum, which indicated that the vases themselves had been taken as booty after a king of Ur had attacked Susa.  Importantly, he restored the name of this king in question as Ur-Namma, observing (at p. 285) that:  

1. “In previous scholarship, the capture of Susa was generally counted among the deeds of [Ur-Namma’s his son], Shulgi, whom the majority of scholars considered to be the true builder of the Ur III empire.  Beyond rendering unto Ur-Namma(k) that which is Ur-Namma(k)’s, the texts published here document a key episode in the history of the Ur III empire and of its eastwards expansion.”   
   

These texts (as restored) certainly allow us to assume that Ur-Namma defeated Puzur-Inshishinak in the Elamite highlands and went on to expel him from Susa.

There is no reason to believe that Ur-Namma had any interest in extending his hegemony into the Elamite highlands, which probably explains why (as we shall see on the following page) the Shimaski kings were able to extend their territory into Elam, presumably at Puzur-Inshushinak’s expense (assuming, of course, that he had survived his encounter with Ur-Namma).

Puzur Inshushinak and the Awan King List

In the sections above, we have followed Puzur-Inshushinak’s career as he progressed (in the eyes of his Susian subjects) through the following series of titles:

1. ✴ensi of Susa and shagina/ shakkanakkku of Elam (in the Akkadian inscriptions on a number of other inscribed objects including Sb. 55 and 157); and
   

2. ✴after his important victory at Huposhan/ Hupsana and his subsequent receipt of the submission of the neighbouring king of Shimashki:
   

3. •king of Awan (in the LE inscriptions on the steps Sb. 139, 140A and 155);
   

4. •mighty king of Awan (in the Akkadian inscription on the step Sb. 151, which was probably duplicated on  Sb. 150, 157, 18452 and 18455); and 
   

5. ✴probably after his victories in the Diyala region and, in particular, his conquest of Akkad:
   

6. •mighty king of Awan and of the four quarters (in the Akkadian inscription on the step Sb. 156, which was probably duplicated on Sb 137, 149, 153, 18451, 18453, 18454 and 18458). 
   

This raises the question of why Puzur-Inshushiunak, who had adopted the Akkadian title shagina of Elam, subsequently rejected the Akkadian title ‘king (lugal) of Elam’ in favour of ‘king of Awan’.  The immediately obvious answer would be that he claimed to have recovered the kingdom of Hit’a (who would later appear as the 11th of the kings in the AwKL).  However:

1. ✴Puzur-Inshushinak is the only Elamite ruler who is known to have used the title ‘king of Awan’; and
   

2. ✴the AwKL (at least in the form in which it has come down to us) was obviously compiled during or after his reign.
   

We therefore cannot rule out the possibility that Puzur-Inshushinak himself commissioned the original list (and that the the other men named in it blissfully unaware that they had been rulers of Awan, rather than of Elam).  If so, then he might have made this choice because Awan had previously appeared in the so-called Sumerian King List (SKL), translated as a composite in CDLI: P479895): in the relevant passages:

1. ✴when Balulu, the last of the Ur I kings, was ‘struck down’, the god-given rule of Mesopotamia was ‘carried off to Awan’ (lines 146-7); and
   

2. ✴it remained there throughout the reigns of three successive (but now un-named) kings of Awan: their reigns lasted (in total) for 356 years before the kingship was seized by Su-suda, the first of the Kish II kings (lines 157-61). 
   

Sumerian King List

Although this king list is known from more than 20 versions, all but one of these date to the 18th century BC: the surviving half of the ‘odd one out’, which is some 200 years older (and thus more relevant to the present discussion) was published by Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2003) as the ‘Ur III Manuscript of the Sumerian King List’ (hereafter USKL): Steinkeller (as above) presented a transliteration at pp, 269-74).  It began (somewhat unpromisingly) with the information that:

1. “When kingship came down from Heaven, (the city of) Kish was sovereign; in Kish, Gushur exercised (kingship) for 2,160 years’”, (col. 1, lines 1-4; translation by Gianni Marchesi, 2o10, at p.  231).
   

More relevantly, it ended with the kingship of Ur-Namma (col. 6, line 32), followed by a dedication:

1. “[The divine] Shulgi, my king: may he live [many] days”, (translated by Piotr Steinkeller, 2003, at p. 269).
   

Importantly, the kingship that had passed through the generations from (the Kish I) king Gushur to the (Ur III) king Ur-Namma was the Heaven-sent kingship of all of Mesopotamia.  In other words, this recension justified Ur-Namma’s hegemony over this entire, united kingdom.

Piotr Steinkeller’s paper of 2003 was primarily intended alert scholars to the newly discovered text at the earliest possible time, but he also posited (at pp. 281-2) the existence  of an earlier version of the SKL  that promoted:

1. “... the idea that Kish [had] remained the seat of kingship from time immemorial down to Sargon’s own day.”
   

He returned to this idea in a more recent book (referenced below, 2017), observing (at p. 41) that:

1. “If such a hypothetical Sargonic list did in fact exist, one would necessarily have to assume that it was later revised, probably in the early Ur III period, when the information about the Gutian and other post-Sargonic dynasties was added.  The product of this redaction would be the [USKL].”
   

text

It is entirely possible that Puzur-Inshushinak was aware of an early version of this list: as Gianni Marchesi (referenced below, 2010, at pp. 223-4, see also note 14) observed, although the most ancient surviving source for this list is a manuscript from the Ur III period published by Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2003):

1. “... we have several clues to the existence of an earlier version dating back to the Sargonic period [that was] possibly written in the Akkadian language.  ... Although the circumstances under which [the list was originally] created are still unknown, it is probable that [it] originally served to legitimise, in some manner, the domination of the kings of Akkad over the whole of Mesopotamia.”
   

An important consideration in this context is that Shimpi-Ishhuk, Puzur-Inshushinak’s father, does not appear in the Awan king list, which means that Puzur-Inshushinak himself  probably had no dynastic right to the kingship of Awan.  It is thus entirely possible, that, after his success in northern Mesopotamia and Akkad, he received he either received the submission of a ruling king of Awan or took the territory and the title by force.