Untash-Napirisha

Untash-Napirisha was the son of Humban-numena and styled himself “king of Anshan and Susa”. The “Berlin Letter”, a later Babylonian text, makes him a son-in-law of the Kassite king Burnaburiash.

That synchronism dates his reign to c. 1340–1300 BCE; a lower chronology, c. 1275–1240 BCE, still appears in some sources, including UNESCO.

The double title is a political claim: the Middle Elamite kingdom rested on two pillars, the Susa plain and the Anshan highland, and the king had to embody both. Marriage into the Babylonian house placed him in the club of great kings of the age.

Legitimacy drawn from blood and gods rather than consent turns the right to rule into family property: the earliest long-lived pattern of politics on the Iranian plateau.

He founded Al-Untash-Napirisha about 40 km south-east of Susa: three enclosure walls, a sacred precinct, a royal quarter with palaces and underground tombs, and a water reservoir. The 105 m ziggurat went up in two phases, and every eleventh brick course bears a dedication.

The site was identified in 1936, excavated by Ghirshman from 1951 to 1962, and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979.

A city built almost from nothing and left mostly empty was a statement of royal power more than an answer to residents’ needs. Ghirshman and Carter see it as a ritual and royal centre, not a commercial town.

Cities planned from above, from Al-Untash to modern capitals, are often abandoned after their founders; cities that grow from people’s free exchange tend to last.

Millions of baked and glazed bricks, ceramic knobs, glass and glaze were produced on site; kilns and workshops have been found in excavation. Store-rooms in the ziggurat’s lower levels held valuables.

No text of his reign about markets, prices, wages or private contracts survives. Our economic evidence is the buildings themselves.

A project like this required a large mobilisation of labour and materials, probably as corvée or ration labour run by temple and palace. That is an inference, not a statement in the texts.

Every brick fired for a royal monument was a brick not fired for a family’s house. The opportunity cost of grand projects is always paid by people whose names are not on the bricks.

The ziggurat was dedicated first to Inshushinak, god of Susa, and then to Inshushinak and Napirisha. Temples to many gods, Kiririsha among them, were built around it. At Susa he built or rebuilt temples for about eighteen gods.

Miroschedji and Vallat read the gathering of lowland and highland gods in one precinct as a policy to unify the kingdom; others see mainly the king’s personal piety. The inscriptions do not state a motive.

Gathering the gods in the king’s capital makes religion a tool of political unity. Religious liberty begins when faith is taken out of the state’s hands.

No law code of his survives. What survives are curse formulae on statues and dedications that consign anyone who tampers with them to the gods’ anger. The Napir-Asu statue and his own statue Sb 62 carry such curses.

A curse protects property in a world without police or independent courts: it guards ownership (here, a god’s dedicated object and the queen’s name) with the threat of divine punishment, which reaches the thief’s descendants and name.

The demand for secure property is visible in the plateau’s earliest texts. Civilisation’s next step was to replace fear of the gods with general rules and impartial courts, and to punish the wrongdoer rather than his children.

No campaign of his is securely recorded. Relations with Kassite Babylon rested on marriage. The inscription of an Immeriya statue from Kassite territory is the only possible hint of conflict, and its reading is disputed.

Vallat reads the text as homage to Burnaburiash and Durand takes “Immeriya” as a votive name; other scholars have suggested a raid on Babylonia. On this evidence he cannot be called either a warrior or a peacemaker.

Peace through exchange and alliance is cheaper than war; but when the alliance is between two royal houses, peace remains the kings’ property rather than the people’s right.

We have almost no texts on ordinary people’s lives in his reign. Queen Napir-Asu, with a statue in her own name and an inscription naming her as the donor, is the most prominent named individual besides the king.

That the queen makes a dedication and lays a curse in her own name shows that Elamite royal women could own property and act in religion. It cannot be generalised to ordinary women.

The sources’ silence about ordinary people is itself evidence: in an order revolving around king and god, an individual enters history only when they own something in their own name.

The city was left unfinished after him, though the sacred precinct and underground tombs stayed in use for centuries. Ashurbanipal devastated the region around 640 BCE. Today the Chogha Zanbil ziggurat is one of the best-preserved ziggurats anywhere.

When the city was abandoned is debated: Carter describes pilgrimage and burial use to about 1000 BCE, while UNESCO links the final destruction to Ashurbanipal.

What survives of Untash-Napirisha is the handiwork of thousands of nameless builders. Admiring the ziggurat is admiring their skill, not necessarily the order that set them to work.