Flying a reconnaissance mission in 1935 over the Khuzestan region in southwestern Iran, oil prospectors noted an odd looking hill on the landscape.

The Iranian Archaeological Service was notified of the sighting. They in turn contacted the French archaeological delegation to Iran, which was excavating at nearby Susa, the ancient capital of the Elamite kingdom. When French archaeologists led by Roland de Mecquenem inspected the mound, they found it contained the ruins of a city. Later studies would reveal a ziggurat at its heart, the largest outside of Mesopotamia.

City of Elam

Local people knew the hill as Chogha Zanbil, meaning “basket-shaped mound.” It became the official name for the site whose excavation began in 1936, under the direction of Mecquenem.

The French team identified the mound as ancient Dur Untash, “the city of Untash,” built by Untash-Napirisha, an Elamite king. Untash-Napirisha, who descended from a long line of Elamite kings who had dominated the region for centuries, reigned around the start of the 13th century B.C.

(Buried for 4,000 years in Iran, this ancient culture could expand the Cradle of Civilization.)

Extending across the plateau east and north of the Persian Gulf, Elam straddled today’s border of Iran and Iraq. It comprised a loose federation of leaders, whose chief monarch ruled from the ancient city of Susa.

The people of this region called themselves the Hatami. The name Elam fell into popular use when archaeologists adopted the Hebrew term from the Old Testament, in which there are numerous references to the kingdom. A king of Elam in Genesis (14:1) is named as Chedorlaomer, and according to tradition ruled Elam and the wider region at the same time as the Sumerian king Hammurabi, in the 18th century B.C. Historians do not know if Chedorlaomer was a historical figure, but the biblical references reflect Elam’s regional importance.

Revealing the ziggurat

In 1939 the outbreak of World War II suspended the work of the French archaeologists at Chogha Zanbil and the mother site at Susa. More than a decade would pᴀss before work finally resumed. The newly appointed head of the French archaeological delegation in Iran, Roman Ghirshman, would now continue the excavations at the site.

Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Ghirshman emigrated following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and established a career in archaeology in France. He chalked up a series of successful projects, including excavations at the Sᴀssanian-Persian city of Bishapur (Iran) and the ancient Kushan city of Begram in Afghanistan. His 1946 appointment to France’s archaeological delegation in Iran centered on the ongoing excavation at Susa, and from this base, Ghirshman restarted the excavation at Chogha Zanbil in 1951.