From Acknowledgment to Legitimization. The Practice of Referencing Previous Kings in Royal Elamite Inscriptions

Abstract

A prominent characteristic of royal Elamite inscriptions, which readily stands out, is the references to predecessors. The majority of these figures appear as previous builder-kings who (re)constructed temples. Also, there are other cases where previous kings are mentioned in connection to other affairs, including the Mesopotamian rulers who were defeated by their Elamite counterparts. The references to previous kings occur in some certain patterns. The predecessors and their achievements are sometimes named and recognized – as their names were preserved in older inscriptions – by the reigning king. Additionally, there are other cases where the current king acknowledges he is not the first one in achieving specific goals, although he does not reveal the names of his predecessors. In such cases, he often refers to his predecessors collectively as “previous kings”. Furthermore, the king occasionally admits that he does not know who (re)built a certain structure before him. This paper studies the various ways in which predecessors are acknowledged in royal Elamite inscriptions.