In her struggles with Chaldaea, Elam was not successful during the earliest historical period of which we have obtained information; and, so far as we can tell at present, her princes long continued to own allegiance to the Semitic rulers whose influence was predominant from time to time in the plains of Lower Mesopotamia.  Tradition relates that two of the earliest Semitic rulers whose names are known to us, Sargon and Naram-Sin, kings of Agade, held sway in Elam, for in the “Omens” which were current in a later period concerning them, the former is credited with the conquest of the whole country, while of the latter it is related that he conquered Apirak, an Elamite district, and captured its king.  Some doubts were formerly cast upon these traditions inasmuch as they were found in a text containing omens or forecasts, but these doubts were removed by the discovery of contemporary documents by which the later traditions were confirmed.  Sargon’s conquest of Elam, for instance, was proved to be historical by a reference to the event in a date-formula upon tablets belonging to his reign.  Moreover, the event has received further confirmation from an unpublished tablet in the British Museum, containing a copy of the original chronicle from which the historical extracts in the “Omens” were derived.  The portion of the composition inscribed upon this tablet does not contain the lines referring to Sargon’s conquest of Elam, for these occurred in an earlier section of the composition; but the recovery of the tablet puts beyond a doubt the historical character of the traditions preserved upon the omen-tablet as a whole, and the conquest of Elam is thus confirmed by inference.  The new text does recount the expedition undertaken by Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon, against Apirak, and so furnishes a direct confirmation of this event.

Another early conqueror of Elam, who was probably of Semitic origin, was Alu-usharshid, king of the city of Kish, for, from a number of his inscriptions found near those of Sargon at Nippur in Babylonia, we learn that he subdued Elam and Para’se, the district in which the city of Susa was probably situated.  From a small mace-head preserved in the British Museum we know of another conquest of Elam by a Semitic ruler of this early period.  The mace-head was made and engraved by the orders of Mutabil, an early governor of the city of Dur-ilu, to commemorate his own valour as the man “who smote the head of the hosts” of Elam.  Mutabil was not himself an independent ruler, and his conquest of Elam must have been undertaken on behalf of the suzerain to whom he owed allegiance, and thus his victory cannot be classed in the same category as those of his predecessors.  A similar remark applies to the success against the city of Anshan in Elam, achieved by Grudea, the Sumerian ruler of Shirpurla, inasmuch as he was a patesi, or viceroy, and not an independent king.  Of greater duration was the influence exercised over Elam by the kings of Ur, for bricks and contract-tablets have been found at Susa proving that Dungi, one of the most powerful kings of Ur, and Bur-Sin, Ine-Sin, and Oamil-Sin, kings of the second dynasty in that city, all in turn included Elam within the limits of their empire.