It will be the main aim of this research to dissect the manifold segments of the Elamite court (ca. 1000-550 BCE). Beyond offering a mere list of official ranks extant in a hierarchical system and examine them from a linguistic point of
view, all these, wherever possible, will be investigated as elements in the political, historical, social, and symbolic networks and strata at Elamite court. This work will necessarily involve more lexical work, trying to achieve more consistent interpretations for the data at hand. It will require studying Elamite royal and administrative inscriptions, non-written data, notably in the form of rock-reliefs and architectural evidence, especially as a counterweight to the Mesopotamian evidence. The central question will not be: how did the Elamite state fare, but how did the Elamite court work? The research proposed is
therefore decidedly non-political in perspective and focuses on structures and long-term developments more than short-term changes and event-history.

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum (Freie Universität Berlin) and Dr. Wouter F. M. Henkelman (École Pratique des Hautes Études (PSL), Paris)