Probing the Margins in Search of Elamite Children

ABSTRACT

Around two decades ago, following on from attempts to redress the long-standing neglect of the lives and contributions of women in antiquity, archaeologists and historians around the world started to reframe their treatments of past societies to incorporate children in larger-scale social, economic, political and religious processes. While scholars of the ancient Near East were much slower to follow, there is now a growing library of research available on children, particularly for Mesopotamia and the biblical world. Children and childhood in Elam, however, are still faring poorly as subjects of inquiry, despite the varied sources from which we can learn about them. This article's raison d’être is to review these sources, which fall into the three broad categories “textual”, “iconographic” and “archaeological”, and reflect on what they can tell us about Elamite children. By the conclusion it becomes clear that Elamite society tended to marginalise younger individuals, who had not yet attained full membership in the group. Their appearance in a fairly restricted range of contexts in art and texts and their differential treatment in death resonates with the results of studies of children in other areas of the Near East.

KEYWORDS:

• Ancient Iran
• Elam
• children
• childhood
• social history

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Mortality rate in 1800–1900 CE: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/childmortality?tab=chart&time=1800.2015&country=IRN. Discussions of child burial in Mesopotamia assume a similar rate (e.g. 48.5% in Frank, “L’inhumation des enfants,” 249).

2 For the marginal treatment of children in the Near East see, for example, Biga (“Essere bambini,” 11).

3 Crawford, Hadley and Shepherd, “Archaeology of Childhood,” 4.

4 Flynn, Children in Ancient Israel, 10–12; Bartash, “Sumerian “Child,”” 6. However, Scurlock and Andersen (Diagnoses, 409) consider LÚ.TUR specific to infants of nursing age.

5 Scurlock and Anderson, Diagnoses, 264. Though note Flynn (Children in Ancient Israel, 10): “at times the fetus in the womb was a strange object, perhaps a fish (dadum) or even a snake.”

6 Graff, “Sexuality, Reproduction and Gender,” 383. Seven or nine days also seems to have been the fixed period for another life-stage transition, the wedding (Stol, Birth in Babylonia, 117–8), and seven days is documented as the liminal period between death and burial in, for example, the case of the mother of Nabonidus (Charpin, Gods, Kings, and Merchants, 132). Pointing out a comparable modern practice in Iran, Scurlock (“Baby-Snatching Demons,” 153) suggested that the placenta – sometimes considered a sort of demonic stillborn twin (Akkadian kūbu) who could endanger the newborn – was placed on the brick within a circle of flour to contain it until its burial after the “magical” number of days.

7 As in Mesopotamia; see Radner, Neuassyrischen Privatrechtsurkunden, 148; Flynn, Children in Ancient Israel, 12.

8 Garroway, “Methodology,” 69–74, Tab 4.1.

9 Leick (Sex and Eroticism, 42–7) has noted that in the myth of Enlil and Ninlil both deities transitioned into adulthood upon their conception of a child; significantly, it was not the onset of menses that marked Ninlil's transition.

10 I take the liberty of borrowing the term “age-grade” applied by Bartash (“Sumerian “Child””) to stages of social development embedded in Sumerian language.

11 Also lacking is the pragmatic method of grading children by height seen in later Mesopotamian legal and administrative tablets (see Radner Neuassyrischen Privatrechtsurkunden, 148). Height was measured by the half-ell/half-cubit (rūṭu), and Livingstone (“Pitter-Patter of Tiny Feet,” 18) has judged that non-elite children were largely treated as adults from one metre.

12 Bartash, “Sumerian “Child,”” 21.

13 Ibid., 3.

14 Haft Tepe texts dating as late as ca. 15–14th century BCE record royal daughters as DUMU.MUNUS (Herrero and Glassner “Choix de textes I,” no. 17; “Choix de textes II,” nos. 74, 89) and sons as DUMU.NITA (Herrero and Glassner, “Choix de textes III,” no. 207).

15 Bartash, “Sumerian “Child,”” 16.

16 See Foster, “Archives and Record-Keeping,” 7. The tablets’ script and shapes date them to the reigns of Naram-Sin and Šar-kali-Šarri (Steinkeller, “Birth of Elam,” 188).

17 Gelb, “Ancient Mesopotamian Ration System.”

18 Translated by Scheil variously as “boy” (MDP 14 51 ii:6, iii:2, iv:3), “young person” (MDP 14 71, face ii:10, rev. ii:7) and “child” (MDP 14 71 face iv:16, 24, rev. i:5).

19 Consistently translated by Scheil as “girl.”

20 https://cdli.ucla.edu/tools/sign_readings/index.php. DUMU.GABA/DUMU.SAL(MUNUS).GABA = “suckling male/female” (CAD d, 183).

21 Gelb, “Ancient Mesopotamian Ration System,” 231–2.

22 Waetzoldt, “Compensation,” 133–4.

23 Ration levels seem primarily dependent upon age but may occasionally have been affected by services rendered (Ibid., 135).

24 https://cdli.ucla.edu/tools/sign_readings/index.php. Bartash (“Sumerian “Child,”” 11), however, believes that while the writing of TUR.UŠ was the same as ibila the underlying word was probably different.

25 CAD ṣ, 235 (ṣuḫāru 2d).

26 Yusifov (“Das Problem,” 59) noted the same evolution in ancient Greek.

27 Ibid., 59–60.

28 Ibid., 60.

29 Bartash (“Sumerian “Child,”” 9–10) understands TUR.TUR as a child age-grade (the duplication likely reflecting plural semantics) and notes it can stand for dumu-dumu, di₄-di₄-(la) or tur-tur.

30 CAD ṣ, 176. Bartash (“Sumerian “Child,”” 21) argues that di₄-di₄-la₍₂₎ [=TUR.TUR.LA] was the main word (written syllabically) Sumerians used for “child” up to adolescence. Scheil recognised TUR.TUR.LA/ṣuh˘h˘uru as a personal name in a text dated to the “year when the copper statue of Ḥutran temti was made” (MDP 24 385).

31 CAD m1, 306–16.

32 Ibid., 300.

33 Badamchi, “Care of the Elderly,” 169.

34 An analysis of adoption in Elam by E. Quintana (“Elamite Family”) highlights just four such texts amongst the legal archives at Susa (MDP 22 1–3, MDP 23 286). For Mesopotamia and particularly its peripheral areas, J. J. Justel (“A New Expression,” 11) has highlighted that the institution of adoption during the period in question was a flexible one with a wide range of functions, including enabling a childless person to maintain their family line, ensuring care and support in one's old age, granting women a male legal status, setting up commercial associations, buying or selling properties, and more.

35 In a study of adoptions recorded at Sippar, G. Suurmeijer (“He Took Him as His Son,” 10) similarly notes that often the mature age of the adoptee can be inferred from their contractual obligations.

36 See adoption texts MDP 22 3, in which a man adopts his aunt in “brotherhood” and MDP 23 286, as well as a legal dispute in MDP 23 321 whereby a man claims to have adopted his father as his brother. All three relate to property transfers.

37 At Nuzi, for example, the verb “to give” is only used for adoptions of children. Otherwise, the formula “NP¹ has adopted NP² as son” is used (Justel “A New Expression,” 7).

38 Designated by the Elamite terms h˘ašša (CAD h, 142) and kiparu (CAD k, 396).

39 Yaron, “Varia on Adoption,” 172; Finkelstein, “šilip rēmim,” 193; Wilcke, “Noch einmal,” 88–9; see also CAD e, 417 ezēbu.

40 Finkelstein, ‘šilip rēmim,” 194.

41 Wilcke, “Noch einmal,” 94; followed by Veenhof, “Two šilip rēmim Adoptions,” 150.

42 The surrendering of this newborn calls to mind the nadītu religious women of Mesopotamia, who were forbidden to have children (see CAD n2, 63–64).

43 Bergmann, Childbirth, 47.

44 The translation “oil allotment” follows CAD, 431 (piššatu).

45 Oppenheim “Interpretation of Dreams,” 258.

46 Written syllabically as LÚ.TUR, TUR.DIŠ; see CAD š2, 317. The term šer šerri “descendants, future generations” (CAD š2, 308) occurs in the Sukkalmah legal corpus where it is often translated as “for posterity” (e.g. MDP 23 200:10, 238:8).

47 Bartash, “Sumerian “Child,”” 6; see also CAD i-j, 71 (ildu).

48 Definition following CAD i-j, 317; Labat translated simply “foetuses”.

49 Hinz and Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch, 230; Tavernier, “Elamite Language,” 427.

50 “Descendant” in Hinz and Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch, 567; “offspring” in Tavernier, “Elamite Language,” 426.

51 MDP 41, 124; Hinz and Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch, 109.

52 Hinz and Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch, 15.

53 Bartash, “Sumerian “Child,”” 5.

54 For example, a king is described as a member of the temple in EKI 45 §18. König (EKI, 101, n. 2, 74 n. 3) discerned a similar development in the use of kuš to indicate membership to a guild or similar.

55 Mofidi-Nasrabadi, “Grave of a Puhu-Teppu,” 151. The term is otherwise only attested in Sukkalmah texts and seals at Susa (CAD p, 502; Tavernier, “Case of Elamite tep-/tip-”).

56 Henkelman (Other Gods, 273) lists these various meanings with examples. Vallat (“religion suso-élamite,” 540) proposed that the Akkadianised puhlale (puhu + lal [lar]) in records of Ashurbanipal's sack of Susa designated a theology student. In late sources, puhu with the genitive suffix -na produced the adjective puhu-na “young” (Tavernier, “Elamite Language,” 428). For Achaemenid Elamite, Hallock (Persepolis Fortification Tablets, 746) translated puhu simply as “child/boy/girl,” whereas Giovinazzo (“I ‘puhu’”) identified the additional meanings “apprentice/helper”, “servant” and “valet (travelling servant)”.

57 Hinz and Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch, 903, 1291.

58 Definition following CAD z, 93–96 (zēru 4)

59 König (EKI, 117 n. 8, 119 n. 6, 143) regarded ahpe as something like “unborn”, thus turpep may be “unripe children” (embryos). Hinz and Koch (Elamisches Wörterbuch, 33, 35), however, consider ahpe as “lineage, descendants”.

60 Definition G. P. Basello (personal communication). Steve (MDP 41, 10, 118 az-ki-it) proposed the meaning “destruction”.

61 IRS, 86.

62 Her eldest, Hutelutuš-Inšušinak, nominated himself son of both men (EKI 60 I/IRS 51:2–3, EKI 65 II), and sometimes also as the “son” of their father, the dynasty's founder, Šutruk-Nahhunte (EKI 61A I/IRS 53:6–12, EKI 62 I/IRS 52:2–3, EKI 63 I), demonstrating the flexible application of kinship terms.

63 Translation G. P. Basello (personal communication). Malbran-Labat (IRS, 72) also believed that the phrase expressed an undesired misfortune (“extinction”, IRS 50:22–24); König (EKI 40 VII-VIII) offered “heart-freezing fate”. Hinz and Koch's (Elamisches Wörterbuch, 103, 1275) proposal that the couple do not want a zahri “weigher” for their children's azkit “death (or soul) judgement” is doubtful.

64 Translation G. P. Basello (personal communication); see also Basello, “Ho posto qui”, 373. König (EKI, 107) translated hut halik as “emblem (sceptre)”; Scheil (MDP 11, 53) and Hinz and Koch (Elamisches Wörterbuch, 725) envisaged “figures, images, portraits”.

65 Hinz and Koch (Elamisches Wörterbuch, 252, 1042), reading ta-an as “obedience”.

66 Ibid., 507.

67 Hinz and Koch (Ibid., 120) suggest reconstructing the broken phrase as sa-a[r ma-al-š]i-in-ni so that an amulet(?) of alabaster protects them.

68 König translated “motherhood”, which G. P. Basello (personal communication) corrects to “mother”.

69 Hinz and Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch, 1045–6.

70 Line repeated later in the text (§72) with variant ru-hu-ur replacing ru-hu-ra. In both instances the text continues: “the quiver is laid down (held down), the country fruits (harvests) are brought in, the peacetime may let the abundance of blessings spread, let the abundance of happiness see (appear).”

71 Alternatively, “my bringer of luck” (Hinz and Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch, 1183). An inscribed jasper “bead” in the British Museum (BM 113886) carries an image of this father-daughter pair in which Par-Uli (=Bar-Uli) could hardly be older than a few years, but it is omitted here due to its lack of provenience.

72 IRS, 118, 176.

73 König (EKI, 35) read we-ir a-a-ni-ir²-ra^?-me “des Samens^? der Verwandtschaft” and Hinz and Koch (Elamisches Wörterbuch, 30, “a-gi”) pi-ir a-a-ni-i[p-me] “the rest of the relatives”.

74 Using pu-hi, an old form of puhu (EKI, 209).

75 MDP 31, 159–60.

76 Khačikjan, Elamite Language, 1.

77 IRS, 34–35.

78 EKI, 34 n. 13. Other Sukkalmah texts asking “for the life of” family members include a brick of Temti-agun referring to an amma hašduk named Pilkiša and three other individuals whose relationship to the author is unclear (MDP 6, 23–24; IRS 14).

79 Vallat, “Fragment,” 193–4.

80 Álvarez-Mon (Monumental Reliefs, 44–6) dates this relief broadly to ca. 11th–7th century BCE.

81 See Stolper, “Mālamīr, B”, 278; for ṣalmu see Hinz and Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch, 1053; CAD ṣ, 78.

82 Text MVN 6 105, 492; see Steinkeller, “Puzur-Inšušinak at Susa,” 299.

83 Kraus, F. R., Altbabylonische Briefe VII, no. 86.

84 Faist, “An Elamite Deportee,” text VAT 9755.

85 Kraus, P. Altbabylonische Briefe I, 46–47 (apud Siegel, Slavery, 44, 46); see also D. Justel, Infancia, 202, fn. 81.

86 Gelb, Sargonic Texts, no. 85; Basello and Ascalone, “Cuneiform Culture,” 700.

87 The volume of corn seed included with their rations suggests that each family was allocated a tract of land of about 0.72 hectares (Jakob, Die mittelassyrischen Texte, 98). Some “Elamites” have Assyrian names, suggesting they had earlier been deported to Assyria and assimilated with Assyrian populations (Ibid., 17–18; Postgate, Bronze Age Bureaucracy, 288–9).

88 Postgate, Bronze Age Bureaucracy, 21.

89 Ibid., 19–20, Tab. 2.1, 288; texts in Jakob, Die mittelassyrischen Texte, nos. 40, 69, 70, 71, 77. In another text, no. 46, Elamites appear to be amongst “threshing-sledge personnel” receiving bread rations (Postgate, Bronze Age Bureaucracy, 287).

90 Observed generally for the Near East by Parayre (“Les âges,” 60–1).

91 Parayre (Ibid., 59–60) noted a tendency to misinterpret eunuchs in Assyrian reliefs as “youths”.

92 It should be recalled that the notion of “age appropriate” clothing that visibly distinguishes children from adults is largely associated with a late 18th century CE notion of “childhood” (Giuntini, “Betwixt and Between,” 68).

93 Neo-Assyrian reliefs also showed newly weaned (pirsu) children still dependent upon their caregivers in this state (Radner Neuassyrischen Privatrechtsurkunden, 130). It is unlikely that the depiction of infants sans hair and clothes reflected real life practice (Asher-Greve and Sweeney, “On Nakedness,” 125).

94 At three or four years, gender stability was recognised through time but not across situations: if a boy started engaging in female behaviour, he might become a girl. At about five a “gender constancy” stage with an unchangeable biological notion of gender was reached, whereby a boy might dress or act like a girl but remains a boy (Kohlberg, “Cognitive-Development Analysis”).

95 The nursing figure appeared in terracotta plaque form around the same time in Mesopotamia, but never achieved great popularity (Budin, Images, 184).

96 MDP 52, nos. 370–83 (dressed) 365–67 (nude).

97 Ibid., nos. 1168–98.

98 Wet-nurses are attested by the text of Manniyatu (MDP 23 288) and an exchange document (MDP 23 313:13) listing a wet-nurse named Annišûa as a witness. Wet-nurses were important to royal families in the Syro-Mesopotamian world (Biga, “Enfants et nourrices”) and were particularly popular with Old Babylonian elite (Gruber, “Breast-Feeding Practices,” 76–7). Employment contracts suggest that children typically entered into their care for three years. 

99 Contra Budin (Images, 215, 217), who saw all mortal and divine Elamite examples as depicting the act of suckling.

100 MDP 52, nos. 1186, 1188.

101 E.g. Ibid., no. 1182.

102 Ibid., no. 1195.

103 E.g. Ibid., nos. 1193 and 1195.

104 Budin, Images, 184–5, 220.

105 MDP 52, nos. 1174, 1176 from VR A IX; 1175 (Building T), 1177–80 (unspecified), and 1187 (house) from VR A XI. Mecquenem (Annual report 1929, 4–8, Pl. 5) recorded one in the Ville Royale (location unspecified). 

106 Budin, Images, 214.

107 Budin (Ibid., 212) hypothesised magical use to ward off the baby-snatching Lamaštu. This demon's presence in Elam is attested by three Lamaštu amulets. Two were found in pot burials of a “young child” and a “very large child” (MDP 33, 2, 51–52, Pl. XV.9) at Chogha Zanbil, southeast of the ziggurat in a residential(?) area with crude constructions. One carried an illegible inscription and the other an inscription thought to have been copied from an Old Babylonian school tablet (Wiggerman in Stol, Birth in Babylonia, 220, n. 14). The third amulet came from a child burial at Susa (Ibid., 52; Scheil, “Documents,” 10–11). The Elamite amulets are unique in the Lamaštu corpus in that they show her holding a snake and a dagger (Götting, “Exportschlager Dämon?”, 443).

108 Budin, Images, 212. For links with fertility see Bahrani, “Iconography of the Nude,” 13.

109 Height 9 cm. Amiet, Elam, no. 324; MDP 1, 127, fig. 296.

110 MDP 40, 7, 13, Pls. 9.1–2, 69 GTZ 881, GTZ 946; another fragmentary example was found near the Royal Passage (Ibid., fig. 1 GTZ 857).

111 MDP 52, 187–88.

112 Exorcists are known to have combined ritual breakage of figurines with prayer to combat demonic forces (Scurlock, “Baby-Snatching Demons,” 143).

113 Barrelet Figurines, 293; see also Budin, Images, 196–7.

114 Álvarez-Mon, Art of Elam, 167.

115 Amiet, Elam, 297.

116 Budin, Images, 216.

117 Text and discussion in Stol Birth in Babylonia, 68–9. Stol comments that the line about Narundi and Naḫundi ends with foreign words, probably Elamite, and that “There are other birth incantations entirely or partly written in Elamite. The magical lore of Elam seems to have been renowned, especially in matters of childbirth and for the protection of the babies from the demon Lamaštu.”

118 Steve, Vallat and Gasche, “Suse,” 461.

119 MDP 25, 232, fig. 82.3.

120 Other diminutive figures vis-a-vis the principal actors occasionally turn up in Sukkalmah and Middle Elamite glyptic, but they are hardly compelling as children and appear to reflect either status-based scale differences or choices about the use of space in the image field. See, for example, MDP 43, nos. 1757, 2020; MDP 42, nos. 22, 27, naked monkeys or imps in nos. 10, 65, 65, 66, 82; Mofidi-Nasrabadi, Die Glyptik, 49, “filler motifs” in group 1 seals 9, 10, 17, 19, 23, 53, and tiny worshipper on seal 195.

121 Mecquenem (MDP 25, 232) took the small figure as a child, as did Parayre (“Les âges,” 78) more recently.

122 Negahban, Excavations, 41, Pl. 26, no. 186a.

123 MDP 52, 208, nos. 1301–1306.

124 Moorey, Ancient Near Eastern Terracottas, 123.

125 Ghirshman, “Suse,” 5, fig. 9; Álvarez-Mon, Art of Elam, 245.

126 Álvarez-Mon, Monumental Reliefs, 13–14. The composition is reminiscent of a ca. 2500 BCE plaque showing the Sumerian king Ur-Nanše with his male children to emphasise dynastic continuity (Livingstone, “Pitter-Patter of Tiny Feet,” 19).

127 See Álvarez-Mon, Monumental Reliefs, 39–41.

128 On a plaque from Susa a woman walking behind a taller man is dressed a similar garment with a cape (Amiet, Elam, no. 339).

129 Women almost invariably wear long skirts. A short-skirted bronze fish-woman figurine from the Neo-Elamite Jubaji tomb near Ram Hormuz is an exception, but she resists neat female categorisation (Wicks, Profiling Death, 153). On braids see Álvarez-Mon, Monumental Reliefs, 40.

130 The presence of sheep in their arms has been suggested by Carter (“Royal Women,” 45).

131 Ibid., 45 n. 40. Believing that this was a Neo-Elamite relief, Börker-Klähn (Altvorderasiatische Bildstelen, 72, 233, no. 272) envisaged the scene as two rulers with their retinue, drawing comparisons with a 9th century image on a throne base showing the Assyrian king Shalmanesar III and his Babylonian counterpart making a low Assyrian handshake. However, the Qal’eh Tol date (following Carter, “Royal Women,” 44–5; Álvarez-Mon, Monumental Reliefs, 41), gesture, and central figures clearly differ.

132 Hinz, Lost World, 129.

133 Álvarez-Mon, Monumental Reliefs, 27–38.

134 Álvarez-Mon (Ibid., 29) regards the extra male in SSI as a later addition to a composition the same as SSII.

135 Heights: SSI boy 82 cm, men 185/187 cm (De Waele, Reliefs Rupestres, 34); SSII boy 76 cm, man 180 cm (Ibid., 38). Modern international data https://www.who.int/childgrowth/standards/cht_lfa_boys_z_0_2.pdf?ua=1 suggests that by two years healthy children reach about half adult height.

136 Álvarez-Mon, Arjān Tomb, 125–6.

137 Ibid., 124.

138 See e.g. Parayre, “Les âges,” 64.

139 Álvarez-Mon, Arjān Tomb, 133.

140 Álvarez-Mon, Art of Elam, 430–1, Pl. 191b.

141 Barnett, North Palace, Pl. XXIII, Rm H, slabs 8–9(?); age-grade identified by Razmjou “Propaganda and Symbolism,” fig. 17.2.

142 Barnett, North Palace, Pl. LXIX, Rm V¹/T¹, Slab B; Pl. XXII, Rm H, Slabs 9–10; Pl. LXVII, Rm V¹/T¹, Slabs C, D.

143 Following Riley's (“Children Should Be Seen,” 80–1) assessment of age categories in the Neo-Assyrian reliefs.

144 Albenda (“Woman, Child, and Family,” 19) noting particularly two men shown with a boy published by Barnett (North Palace, Pl. LXVIII, Room V¹/T¹, Slab F).

145 Barnett, Bleibtreu, and Turner, Southwest Palace, Pl. 297, no. 383b, Rm XXXIII(BB).

146 Ibid., Pl. 311, no. 386c, Rm XXXIII(BB).

147 MDP 52, no. 765.

148 For which, see Parayre “Les âges,” 64, fig. 6.

149 E.g. Amiet, Elam, nos. 316, 317, 323.

150 Found amongst diverse objects in a pot near a burial in the Ville Royale (MDP 25, 208–9, Pl. X.4-5; Amiet, Elam, no. 327). According to Caubet (“Small Finds,” 154) the hairstyle is female and the material, once thought to be ivory, is shell.

151 MDP 33, 53.

152 Crawford, Hadley and Shepherd, “Archaeology of Childhood,” 7–8.

153 Kedar (“Apprenticeship,” 540), however, suggests that Neo-Babylonian apprenticeships in specialised crafts started when a child reached perhaps 12 years (though age is never mentioned in contracts).

154 E.g. Crawford, Hadley and Shepherd, “Archaeology of Childhood,” 13.

155 Tsouparopoulou, “Deconstructing Textuality,” 269, fig. 7b. I thank Ali Zalaghi for highlighting this evidence to me.

156 At Haft Tepe, Negahban (Excavations, 104) also reported fragments of school tablets in trenches K and J XXXIV on the northeast side of Terrace Complex I.

157 Tanret and De Graef, “Exercise Tablets.”

158 Ibid., 248–50.

159 It was deposited with ten other tablets, including two previously mentioned omen texts, under a stone slab outside a monumental wall (of a religious precinct?) in the Ville Royale A, level XII (MDP 57, 1–2).

160 Distribution and dates following Crist, Dunn-Vaturi and de Voogt, Ancient Egyptians at Play, 81. For a late 3rd/early 2nd millennium BCE board fragment see MDP 29, 44, fig. 39; de Voogt, Dunn-Vaturi and Eerkens, “Cultural Transmission,” tab. 1.

161 Five board fragments found with astragals in the Inšušinak temple hoard on the Acropole (MDP 7, figs. 34549, 351; de Voogt, Dunn-Vaturi and Eerkens, “Cultural Transmission,” tab. 2).

162 Crist, Dunn-Vaturi and De Voogt, Ancient Egyptians at Play, 116.

163 Crist, De Voogt and Dunn-Vaturi, “Facilitating Interaction.”

164 Gasche, Tell Ed-Dēr (S.169).

165 Suggested by Harrington (“World Without Play?”, 546) for Egypt.

166 A stylistically comparable wheeled mouflon, which had openings in its mouth and back for use as a vessel, was deposited in an Early Dynastic III-Akkadian period tomb at Bani Surmah in Luristan (Haerinck and Overlaet, Bani Surmah, 11–12, 21, Pl. IX, tomb 5, inventory no. B5-17). Identical theriomorphic vessels are known from Early Dynastic III or Akkadian contexts at Ur, Kish, Chokha, Khafadjah, Tell Asmar and Mari (Haerinck and Overlaet, Bani Surmah, 21, with references), and at least two heads published from Susa (MDP 1, figs. 293–294) seem to have belonged to similar vessels. Though it lacks the pierced protuberance at the chest and hole in the mouth typical of these vessels, the “Middle Elamite” wheeled mouflon from Susa has been described by Spycket (“Popular Art at Susa,” 196, cat. 139) as having “vent holes” in the back and where the tail should be, and it is so close in detail (including front and back wheels of slightly different sizes) that a revision of its date may be required. Its precise find context is not known, but it too may have been subject to some kind of ritual use. The bitumen carts were taken by Livingstone (“Pitter-Patter of Tiny Feet,” 23) as toys for “action games”, but their use by children also remains speculative. These and a third bitumen cart with empty mortises on the upper surface and cross-sectional holes for axles were found in the Inšušinak temple hoard (MDP 7, 100, Pl. XXIII.8, 103–104, fig. 341–42; or in a nearby funerary deposit per Connan and Deschesne, Le bitume à Suse, 276, nos. 257–259), which also suggests a religious function.

167 Figurines were reported in Middle Elamite vessel burials at Susa (e.g. Mecquenem, Annual report 1922, 6).

168 Possible miniature vessels in late 3rd millennium burials (Mecquenem, Annual report 1926, 3; “derniers résultats,” 84).

169 Mecquenem, Annual report 1929, 5.

170 Wardle and Wardle, “Child's Cache,” 41.

171 Wicks, “Mortuary Treatment.”

172 Just one documented tomb (ca. 720/700–525 BCE) contained children, a 6–7-year-old and 1–2-month-old, in the main chamber (Miroschedji, “Fouilles,” 24–35), and occasionally a child was noted in an antechamber (e.g. Mecquenem, Annual report 1928, 4; “Note,” 139). It cannot be ruled out, however, that more children had been present in the earlier-excavated tombs and were simply missed by the archaeologists (or their teams of workers).

173 Five foetuses or newborns were buried together under the floor of one house, and an older child under another house of level XV (following low chronology ca. 1700–1640 BCE; note that the floors below this level were not thoroughly investigated) and an infant below one year of age under another large residence of level XIII (following low chronology ca. 1570–1500 BCE) (Gasche and Cole, “Elamite Funerary Practices,” 753; for the chronology of the Ville Royale A levels, see Gasche “Transferts culturels,” 79, fig. 5b).

174 Murphy and Le Roy, “Introduction,” 4–6.

175 Gasche, Tell Ed-Dēr.

176 Mofidi-Nasrabadi, “Vorbericht,” Tab. 1.

177 Garroway (Children, 216–7) observed this for the Near East in general.

178 Parayre, “Les âges,” 60.

179 Capomacchia and Zocca, “Liminalità infantile,” 5.