Tablet with the King Lists of Awan and Simashki
Unknown · c. 1800-1600 BC
Written in tiny cuneiform on a clay tablet the size of a hand, this is a list of kings: twelve rulers of the dynasty of Awan followed by twelve rulers of the dynasty of Simashki. The tablet has been broken and rejoined, but the columns of Akkadian text are still legible to specialists. It is one of the most important written sources for the early history of Elam.
The tablet was written at Susa between about eighteen hundred and sixteen hundred BC, centuries after the kings it names, and it preserves a memory of two dynasties that ruled Elam in the late third millennium BC. Some of the names, such as Puzur-Inshushinak of Awan, are known from other inscriptions, which lets historians anchor the list in time; others appear nowhere else. Without it, the sequence of early Elamite rulers would be largely unknown. The tablet was given to the Louvre in nineteen thirty two after the French excavations at Susa. Its unbaked clay has survived nearly four thousand years.
Did You Know? Twenty four royal names on a piece of clay smaller than a smartphone are almost all we have of six centuries of Elamite kings.
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