ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the art of the time of Puzur-Inshushinak, a contemporary of the Ur III rulers Ur-Nammu and Gudea, who carried out military campaigns in the Zagros, the Diyala region and the Akkadian heartland. The complex political identity of Puzur-Inshushinak was tied into a military career that made him the first native ruler to unite most of Iran. He occupied northern Babylonia for perhaps at least eight years were he was exposed to court-based artistic traditions established in the imperial workshops of Akkad. Although Puzur-Inshushinak did not adopt the image of the pious ruler like his Ur III contemporaries, some aspects of his artistic program at Susa do expose trends associated with them. Equally important are the Susian and highland Elamite elements of the cultural portrait of this time, manifested especially in the use of local limestone and bitumen, in the depiction of the enthroned Elamite goddess Narundi with lions, and in the pierced boulders decorated with protective serpents and lions. Perhaps most striking is Puzur-Inshushinak’s employment of the still-undeciphered Linear-Elamite script presumably representing the official language of the Awanite kingdom.
