of Babylonia (c. 2100 B.C.); another would have been the Chedor-laomer (Kutur-Lagamar) of Genesis xiv. One of the greatest builders among them was Untas-Gal (the pronunciation of the second element in the name is uncertain). About 1330 B.C. Khurba-tila was captured by Kuri-galzu III., the Kassite king of Babylonia, but a later prince Kidin-Khutrutas avenged his defeat, and Sutruk-Nakhkhunte (1220 B.C.) carried fire and sword through Babylonia, slew its king Zamama-sum-iddin and carried away a stela of Naram-Sin and the famous code of laws of Khammurabi from Sippara, as well as a stela of Manistusu from Akkuttum or Akkad. He also conquered the land of Asnunnak and carried off from Padan a stela belonging to a refugee from Malatia. He was succeeded by his son who was followed on the throne by his brother, one of the great builders of Elam. In 750 B.C. Umbadara was king of Elam; Khumban-igas was his successor in 742 B.C. In 720 B.C. the latter prince met the Assyrians under Sargon at Dur-ili in Yamutbal, and though Sargon claims a victory the result was that Babylonia recovered its independence under Merodach-baladan and the Assyrian forces were driven north. From this time forward it was against Assyria instead of Babylonia that Elam found itself compelled to exert its strength, and Elamite policy was directed towards fomenting revolt in Babylonia and assisting the Babylonians in their struggle with Assyria. In 716 B.C. Khumban-igas died and was followed by his nephew, Sutruk-Nakhkhunte. He failed to make head against the Assyrians; the frontier cities were taken by Sargon and Merodach-baladan was left to his fate. A few years later (704 B.C.) the combined forces of Elam and Babylonia were overthrown at Kis, and in the following year the Kassites were reduced to subjection. The Elamite king was dethroned and imprisoned in 700 B.C. by his brother Khallusu, who six years later marched into Babylonia, captured the son of Sennacherib, whom his father had placed there as king, and raised a nominee of his own, Nergal-yusezib, to the throne. Khallusu was murdered in 694 B.C., after seeing the maritime part of his dominions invaded by the Assyrians. His successor Kudur-Nakhkhunte invaded Babylonia; he was repulsed, however, by Sennacherib, 34 of his cities were destroyed, and he himself fled from Madaktu to Khidalu. The result was a revolt in which he was killed after a reign of ten months. His brother Umman-menan at once collected allies and prepared for resistance to the Assyrians. But the terrible defeat at Khalulē broke his power; he was attacked by paralysis shortly afterwards, and Khumba-Khaldas II. followed him on the throne (689 B.C.). The new king endeavoured to gain Assyrian favour by putting to death the son of Merodach-baladan, but was himself murdered by his brothers Urtaki and Teumman (681 B.C.), the first of whom seized the crown. On his death Teumman succeeded and almost immediately provoked a quarrel with Assur-bani-pal by demanding the surrender of his nephews who had taken refuge at the Assyrian court. The Assyrians pursued the Elamite army to Susa, where a battle was fought on the banks of the Eulaeus, in which the Elamites were defeated, Teumman captured and slain, and Umman-igas, the son of Urtaki, made king, his younger brother Tammaritu being given the district of Khidalu. Umman-igas afterwards assisted in the revolt of Babylonia under Samas-sum-yukin, but his nephew, a second Tammaritu, raised a rebellion against him, defeated him in battle, cut off his head and seized the crown. Tammaritu marched to Babylonia; while there, his officer Inda-bigas made himself master of Susa and drove Tammaritu to the coast whence he fled to Assur-bani-pal. Inda-bigas was himself overthrown and slain by a new pretender, Khumba-Khaldas III., who was opposed, however, by three other rivals, two of whom maintained themselves in the mountains until the Assyrian conquest of the country, when Tammaritu was first restored and then imprisoned, Elam being utterly devastated. The return of Khumba-Khaldas led to a fresh Assyrian invasion; the Elamite king fled from Madaktu to Dur-undasi; Susa and other cities were taken, and the Elamite army almost exterminated on the banks of the Ititē. The whole country was reduced to a desert, Susa was plundered and razed to the ground, the royal sepulchres were desecrated, and the images of the gods and of 32 kings “in silver, gold, bronze and alabaster,” were carried away. All this must have happened about 640 B.C. After the fall of the Assyrian empire Elam was occupied by the Persian Teispes, the forefather of Cyrus, who, accordingly, like his immediate successors, is called in the inscriptions “king of Anzan.” Susa once more became a capital, and on the establishment of the Persian empire remained one of the three seats of government, its language, the Neo-Susian, ranking with the Persian of Persepolis and the Semitic of Babylon as an official tongue. In the reign of Darius, however, the Susianians attempted to revolt, first under Assina or Atrina, the son of Umbadara, and later under Martiya, the son of Issainsakria, who called himself Immanes; but they gradually became completely Aryanized, and their agglutinative dialects were supplanted by the Aryan Persian from the south-east.
Elam, “the land of the cedar-forest,” with its enchanted trees, figured largely in Babylonian mythology, and one of the adventures of the hero Gilgamesh was the destruction of the tyrant Khumbaba who dwelt in the midst of it. A list of the Elamite deities is given by Assur-bani-pal; at the head of them was In-Susinak, “the lord of the Susians,”—a title which went back to the age of Babylonian suzerainty,—whose image and oracle were hidden from the eyes of the profane. Nakhkhunte, according to Scheil, was the Sun-goddess, and Lagamar, whose name enters into that of Chedor-laomer, was borrowed from Semitic Babylonia.
See W. K. Loftus, Chaldaea and Susiana (1857); A. Billerbeck, Susa (1893); J. de Morgan, Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse (9 vols., 1899–1906). (A. H. S.)
ELAND (= elk), the Dutch name for the largest of the South
African antelopes (Taurotragus oryx), a species near akin to the
kudu, but with horns present in both sexes, and their spiral
much closer, being in fact screw-like instead of corkscrew-like.
There is also a large dewlap, while old bulls have a thick forelock.
In the typical southern form the body-colour is wholly pale
fawn, but north of the Orange river the body is marked by
narrow vertical white lines, this race being known as T. oryx
livingstonei. In Senegambia the genus is represented by T.
derbianus, a much larger animal, with a dark neck; while in the
Bahr-el-Ghazal district there is a gigantic local race of this species
(T. derbianus giganteus). (R. L.*)
ELASTICITY. 1. Elasticity is the property of recovery of
an original size or shape. A body of which the size, or shape,
or both size and shape, have been altered by the application of
forces may, and generally does, tend to return to its previous
size and shape when the forces cease to act. Bodies which
exhibit this tendency are said to be elastic (from Greek, ἐλαύνειν,
to drive). All bodies are more or less elastic as regards size;
and all solid bodies are more or less elastic as regards shape.
For example: gas contained in a vessel, which is closed by a
piston, can be compressed by additional pressure applied to the
piston; but, when the additional pressure is removed, the gas
expands and drives the piston outwards. For a second example:
a steel bar hanging vertically, and loaded with one ton for each
square inch of its sectional area, will have its length increased by
about seven one-hundred-thousandths of itself, and its sectional
area diminished by about half as much; and it will spring back
to its original length and sectional area when the load is gradually
removed. Such changes of size and shape in bodies subjected
to forces, and the recovery of the original size and shape when
the forces cease to act, become conspicuous when the bodies
have the forms of thin wires or planks; and these properties
of bodies in such forms are utilized in the construction of spring
balances, carriage springs, buffers and so on.
It is a familiar fact that the hair-spring of a watch can be coiled and uncoiled millions of times a year for several years without losing its elasticity; yet the same spring can have its shape permanently altered by forces which are much greater than those to which it is subjected in the motion of the watch. The incompleteness of the recovery from the effects of great forces is as important a fact as the practical completeness of the recovery from the effects of comparatively small forces.
