§ I. M. de Morgan’s Mission in Susiana.
The progress of oriental archæology leads us from one surprise to another. Year after year discoveries are made in rapid succession, which we watch with breathless interest as they transform and elucidate some chapter in the history of those primitive civilizations from which our own is in part derived. Following the discoveries made in Chaldæa, Assyria, and Phœnicia, another region of the East now takes its turn in throwing light on the past—the country of Elam, or Susiana, a region hitherto almost unknown to us, although in the earliest ages of the world it played an important part.
The ruins of Susa, situated at the north of Ahwaz, form a number of immense tells which cover an extent of four and a half to six square miles on both banks of the river Kerkha. The plain, which is dominated by these majestic mounds as far as the banks of the Karún, stretches far to the north, where it is bounded by the Bakhtiyari mountains. Southward it extends to the Shatt al Arab and Lower Chaldæa.
What new material may we draw from this ancient soil of Elam, to provide food for our chimæra-like appetite for universal knowledge; a soil where countless generations of human beings lie buried, piled on each other like so many geological stratifications, and surrounded by all the appurtenances of their earthly existence? The Greeks have merely transmitted to us baseless fables concerning the history of Elam. Ignoring all local traditions, the writers of the Macedonian period related that the mythical founder of this region was Memnon, son of Tithonus, and of Aurora; that he led a body of black warriors to the aid of Troy when besieged by the Greeks, and was slain in a duel by Achilles. Eos, or Aurora, wept for her son, and according to a pretty fiction it is the tears of this inconsolable mother which form the morning dew. Classical antiquity was cradled in such poetic stories of the mysterious regions of the rising sun, without any attempt to discover the actual facts. It is the Bible alone that has preserved the name of one of the kings of Susa, Chedorlaomer, a contemporary of Abraham.
In the present day, however, the power of deciphering the Chaldæan cuneiform texts has rendered us acquainted with isolated episodes of the political relations between the Elamites and the Babylonians and Ninevites.
In 1810 Macdonald Kinnear and Monteith accompanied General Malcolm on his mission to the Shah of Persia; in 1826 Sir Henry Rawlinson, and later again Sir A. H. Layard, visited the tells of Susa, and copied several inscriptions which had been laid bare by the heavy rains. As the monuments emerged from the rubbish, it became evident that only excavation could compel the mounds of Susa to yield the secrets they contained.
These excavations were commenced in 1851 by Sir Kenneth Loftus and Colonel Williams, who cleared the wells of the palace of Darius I., son of Hystaspes. The researches were then abandoned, and it was only in 1885 that the French Government commissioned M. Dieulafoy to carry on the work begun by Loftus. He laid bare the Apadana of Artaxerxes, and deposited in the Louvre Museum the magnificent Achæmenid fragments described in Chapter V. of this volume (p. 146 et seq). But various remains and fragments of inscriptions of an age far more remote showed that merely the surface of the ruins had been touched, and that it would be necessary to undertake systematic excavations of greater depth. A diplomatic treaty signed May 12th, 1895, renewed and confirmed in Paris in 1900 by the Shah of Persia, accorded to France the exclusive right to carry out archæological excavations over the whole extent of the Persian Empire. M. Jacques de Morgan was appointed Delegate-General of Antiquities in Persia, with a special mission to carry on the researches at Susiana.
After encountering difficulties of every kind, M. de Morgan, accompanied by a number of colleagues, among whom we must mention one of the most eminent of contemporary Assyriologists, Père V. Scheil, arrived at the site of the ruins of Susa on the 16th of December, 1897, and commenced work there. The first results sent to Paris formed a special exhibition at the Grand Palais des Champs Elysées, in the spring of 1901, and occasioned great surprise and admiration. These remains consist of immense numbers of inscribed bricks, of bas-reliefs, of stelæ covered with cuneiform writing of most archaic appearance, and of works of art of a style hitherto unknown. Thus, in beginning the publication of these monuments, and the translation of the texts, M. Scheil could write without exaggeration or hyperbole: “It is here that the history of the country of Elam begins”; and he then proceeds to deal with those great problems of history, of which the solution had become the question of the moment.
What were the earliest civilizations of the East, and to what period do they carry us back? To what ethnic groups do the Elamites belong? What connection is there between Elam, Anzan, and Susa, the three names given in the original texts to Susiana? Did there actually exist in that country a combination of institutions, political or religious, of a distinctive and independent character? What languages and what races of mankind met in that region which adjoins the land of the Semites, the Arians, and perhaps the Turanians?
These are questions of deep moment, and they have obtained from the early excavating campaigns a hesitating and partial reply, which does not satisfy our thirst for the whole truth regarding the origins of the earliest civilizations. “The proto-archaic texts,” says M. Scheil regretfully, “will show how limited is our knowledge both of the origins, which are continually becoming more remote, and of the primary factors of civilization, the number of which is steadily increasing.”