ABSTRACT
Ælam regio: Elam in Western Scholarship from the Renaissance to the Late 19th Century (Daniel T. Potts)
Elam and its geographical and historical relatives (Elymais, Susa, Shushan, etc.) occur in a wide array of Biblical, Classical, cuneiform, and late Antique literary sources, the study of which in Europe dates back to the Renaissance. This chapter reviews the breadth of Western scholarship on Elam before the inception of Jacques de Morgan’s excavations at Susa in the late 19th century, sketching the intellectual ‘prehistory’ of the scholarly interest in Elam that has grown exponentially since 1900.
