Eylam (Elam)

עילם


Eylam (Elam) is Persia, today's Iran, which the later Biblical texts (e.g. Ezra 4:7 below) call Paras (פרס), presumably because it only came to be known as Persia after its conquest by the Medean king Darius (properly Dârayavauš).

It was Darius' son, wwho we call Cyrus and the Tanach calls Koresh, though properly he was Kûruš or Khûrvaš the Great who defeated the Babylonians in 536 BCE, founded the Achaemenid Empire, and gave the Yehudim permission to return from exile to Yeru-Shala'im, even providing money for the reconstruction of the Temple. Other than Kedar-la-Omer and the War of the Kings, there are virtually no references to Eylam in the Tanach before the Exile: Hebrew Yisra-Eli extends no further east than Babylon.

Why did the Beney Yisra-El call it Eylam, and not Paras, especially given that the Redaction of the Tanach took place in Ezra's time, and to him it was Paras? The probability is that Paras and Eylam were both provinces that came to power and prominence and different moments of history. To Ezra it was unquestionably Paras, but presumably, having lived there, he also knew that Eylam was the name of the most ancient civilisation of that region, and therefore to call it Paras in the Genesis stories would be the equivalent of naming Roman Helvetia Switzerland or 18th century Prussia Germany ...but click here and you can get a fuller account.

Genesis 10:22 names him as a son of Shem, which is problematic, because the Persians regard themselves as Aryan, and not part of the Cham-Shem-Yaphet division of the human race at all; nor do they regard themselves as Arabs, as Persia is east of Arabia. As per the link, Arya was an Indic word, and the name identifies the Persians with the Indic peoples of the east, though not with the Hittites, who were the conquerors of the Indus Valley, the builders of the civilisation of Mohenjo Dara, before the Aryan "invasion".

Genesis 14:1 ff: Kedar-la-Omer (כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר) king of Eylam, was one of the protagonists in the War of the Kings.

Ezra 4:7 ff: has Artachshasta (אַרְתַּחְשַׁשְׂתָּא), who we would call Artaxerxes, as the Persian king; his capital was Susa.

Daniel 8:2: Dani-El states that his vision came while he was in "Shushan the capital of the province of Eylam" during the kingship of Beli-Shatsar (בֵּלְאשַׁצַּר Belshazar).

Innumerable references in Isaiah (11:11 for example), Jeremiah (e.g. 25:25) and one in Ezekiel (32:24).

Note that the name is used in the feminine for the land, masculine for the people; cf Ephrayim.

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