Travel Guide Suse

Suse, whose site is occupied from the fourth millennium before our era, remains the only city in Iran to boast of a past as distant as that of Babylon, his rival. Excavations revealed a large number of accounting tablets, demonstrating the importance of this mall. Around 2300 BC, the city is nevertheless annexed by the Semitic empire of Akkad. Capital of the Élamite Empire (2000 to 500 BC), it is undergoing unprecedented growth. Around 700 BC, his victory over Babylon allows him to raise a formidable treasure, including the Hammurabi Code.Under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (from 605 to 562 BC), Babylon nevertheless takes its revenge; Suse will in turn be looted and burned. The élamite power is broken, but the Assyrian Empire falls quickly under the Coups'blows, themselves defeated by the Achéménides who integrate Suse into their Persian Empire. Since 520 BC, Darius I am the capital of the twenty satrapies of the Empire. Its geographical position, very favourable, is the mid-distance between Babylon and Pasargadae, at the crossroads of the main communication routes. Unlike Persepolis, which does not appear to have been known to the Greeks before Alexander the Great arrives, Suse already enjoys a great reputation.And it was only in the 4 000 th century that the West rediscovering Suse, whose remains stretched over km ². The first surveys were conducted in 1851 by an English mission. From 1884 to 1896, Marcel and Jane Dieulafoy set up a part of the palace and discovered the famous hangers of enamelled brick, known as Lions and Archers, today preserved at the Louvre in Paris. However, despite its illustrious past and archaeological excavations, few elements remain accessible. Nothing to see with the site of Persepolis. Capitals, landforms, sculptures and jewellery have been "collected" by archaeologists and are, for the most part, kept at the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum in London… Fortress Castle Morgan, built at the end of the th century by French archaeologists to protect itself from Arab incursions, seems to attract the greatest number of visitors!