Hammurabi and the king of Larsa made an alliance when they discovered this duplicity and were able to crush the Elamites, although Larsa did not contribute greatly to the military effort.

But the power of the Sumerians was waning ; Ibbi-Sin in the 21st century did not manage to penetrate far into Elam, and in 2004 BC, the Elamites, allied with the people of Susa and led by king Kindattu, the sixth king of Simashk, managed to sack Ur and lead Ibbi-Sin into captivity — thus ending the third dynasty of Ur.

The Akkadian kings of Isin, successor state to Ur, did manage to drive the Elamites out of Ur, rebuild the city, and to return the statue of Nanna that the Elamites had plundered.

However, he did succeed in repulsing the Elamites from the Ur region.

While the Assyrians were busy at the Persian Gulf, the Elamites invaded northern Babylonia in a complete surprise.

There appear to have been alliances of Elam and Babylonia against the powerful Assyrians ; the Babylonian king Mar-biti-apla-ushur ( 984 – 979 ) was of Elamite origin, and Elamites are recorded to have fought unsuccessfully with the Babylonian king Marduk-balassu-iqbi against the Assyrian forces under Shamshi-Adad V ( 823 – 811 ).

The Chaldean king Merodach-Baladan allied with the Elamites during the 8th century BC in numerous failed attempts to wrest Babylon from the Assyrians.

Following the collapse of the Ur-III dynasty at the hands of the Elamites ( 2002 BC traditional, 1940 BC short ), the Amorites gained control over most of Mesopotamia, where they formed a series of small kingdoms.

His first campaign took place in 703 BC against Marduk-apla-iddina II who had seized the throne of Babylon and gathered an alliance supported by Chaldeans, Aramaeans, and Elamites.

It fell around 1940 BC to the Elamites in the 24th regnal year of Ibbi-Sin, an event commemorated by the Lament for Ur.

* 1180 BC: The last Kassite king, Anllil-nadin-akhe, is defeated by the Elamites

Following the collapse of the last Sumerian " Ur-III " dynasty at the hands of the Elamites ( 2002 BC traditional, 1940 BC short ), the Amorites, another Semitic people, gradually gained control over most of southern Mesopotamia, where they formed a series of small kingdoms, while the Assyrians reasserted their independence in the north.

Uruk was prominent in the national struggles of the Sumerians against the Elamites up to 2004 BC, in which it suffered severely ; recollections of some of these conflicts are embodied in the Gilgamesh epic, in the literary and courtly form that has come down to us.

It was at that time ruled by independent kings, Ur-Nanshe ( 24th century BC ) and his successors, who were engaged in contests with the Elamites on the east and the kings of " Kienĝir " and Kish on the north.

Around 1760 BC, Hammurabi drove out the Elamites, overthrew Rim-Sin of Larsa, and established Babylonian dominance in Mesopotamia.

Among these pressuring tribes were the Parsu, first recorded in 844 BC as living on the southeastern shore of Lake Urmiah, but who by the end of this period would cause the Elamites ' original home, the Iranian Plateau, to be renamed Persia proper.

More details are known from the late 8th century BC, when the Elamites were allied with the Chaldean chieftain Merodach-baladan to defend the cause of Babylonian independence from Assyria.

During a brief respite provided by the civil war between Ashurbanipal and his own brother Shamash-shum-ukin whom their father Esarhaddon had installed as the vassal king of Babylon, the Elamites too indulged in fighting among themselves, so weakening the Elamite kingdom that in 646 BC Ashurbanipal devastated Susiana with ease, and sacked Susa.

When the deteriorating Third Dynasty of Ur ( Ur-III ) finally collapsed at the hands of the Elamites at the end of the third millennium BC, a power vacuum was left that other city-states scrambled to fill.

To avenge the death of his son, whom the Babylonians had effectively killed when they handed him over to the Elamites in 694 BC, Sennacherib pillaged and burned Babylon, tore down its walls, and even diverted the Euphrates into the city.

The Lament for Ur, or Lamentation over the city of Ur is a Sumerian lament composed around the time of the fall of Ur to the Elamites and the end of the city's third dynasty ( c. 2000 BC ).

3200 BC to 2700 BC when Susa, the later capital of the Elamites, began to receive influence from the cultures of the Iranian plateau.

Nergal-ushezib, originally Shuzub, was a Babylonian nobleman who was installed as King of Babylon by the Elamites in 694 BC, after their capture of Babylon and deposition and murder of the previous king Ashur-nadin-shumi, son of King Sennacherib of Assyria.

He reigned for six years, until he was murdered by the Elamites following their capture of the city in 694 BC.

On the one hand, the Elamites spoke a non-Iranian language and were culturally closer to the established civilizations of Sumer and Akkad than they were to the tribes of the Iranian plateau.

The temple treasury was raided by invading Elamites and the centre of power in Sumer moved to Isin, while control of trade in Ur passed to several leading families of the city.

A creation date at the beginning of the second millennium BCE places the relief into a region and time in which the political situation was unsteady, marked by the waxing and waning influence of the city states of Isin and Larsa, an invasion by the Elamites, and finally the conquest by Hammurabi in the unification in the Babylonian empire in 1762 BCE.

The Elamites under Shutruk-Nahhunte plundered the original stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi, the world's first known written laws, in ca.

On the other hand, the Elamites linked the old civilizations of Mesopotamia and the new peoples of the plateau, and their version of Mesopotamian civilization was a formative influence on the first indisputably Persian empire of the Achaemenids.

Hence one contemporary historian, Elton Daniel, states that the Elamites are " the founders of the first Iranian empire in the geographic sense ".

Babylon was then ruled by a native Babylonian puppet of the Assyrians Bel-ibni, who was replaced by Ashur-nadin-shumi, an Assyrian prince who was murdered by the Elamites and replaced with a native Babylonian puppet Nergal-ushezib.

He formed a powerful coalition including Nabu-bel-shumate, king of the Mesopotamian Sealands, the Elamites, the Chaldean tribes of the South under Merodach Baladan, the kings of Guti, Amurru and Meluhha and the Arabs from Arabia.

Khuzestan was once inhabited by a people known as the Elamites, who spoke neither Indo-European languages ( like the Medes and Persians of the Iranian plateau ) nor Semitic languages ( like the peoples of the Mesopotamian city-states ).

Following this, the city was conquered by the neo-Sumerian Ur-III dynasty, and held until Ur finally collapsed at the hands of the Elamites under Kindattu in ca.

By the time the Neo-Sumerian Ur-III dynasty collapsed at the hands of the Elamites in ca.

However Merodach-Baladan and the Elamites continued to agitate against Assyrian rule.

He fought and defeated the Elamites and drove them from Babylonian territory, sacking the Elamite capital Susa, and recovering the sacred statue of Marduk that had been carried off from Babylon.

Marduk prophecies that he will return once more to Babylon to a messianic new king, who will bring salvation to the city and who will wreak a terrible revenge on the Elamites.

The Assyrian dominion over Babylon was underlined by Sargon's son Sennacherib, who defeated the Elamites and Babylonians and dethroned Merodach-baladan for a second time, installing his own son Ashur-nadin-shumi on the Babylonian throne in 700.

Conder's work still adheres to the four-way classification, but in his eye for detail he puts together much historical work to create something resembling our modern Western image: he includes Druze, Yezidis, Mandeans, and Elamites under a list of possibly monotheistic groups, and under the final category, of " polytheism and pantheism ", he lists Zoroastrianism, " Vedas, Puranas, Tantras, Reformed sects " of India as well as " Brahminical idolatry ", Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Lamaism, " religion of China and Japan ", and " illiterate superstitions ".

The stele was later plundered by the Elamites and removed to their capital, Susa ; it was rediscovered there in 1901 and is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Ziggurats were built by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, Akkadians, and Assyrians for local religions.

* c. 2450 BCE: Kish is lost to Khamazi tribesmen of the Kurdistan mountains ; Elamites from Awan occupy parts of Sumer.

This was made by order of Hammurabi after the expulsion of the Elamites and the settlement of his kingdom.

This implies that the Elamites were considered Semites by the Hebrews, although their language was not Semitic, but is considered a linguistic isolate.

Ziggurats were built by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, and Assyrians as monuments to local religions.

Ziggurats were built by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, Akkadians, and Assyrians for local religions.

It seems to have suffered severely in some manner at or about the time the Elamites invaded, as shown by broken fragments of statuary, votive vases and the like, from that period.