A NEO-ELAMITE ROYAL FAMILY BY M.W. WATERS (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) As anyone who has examined Neo-Elamite history is aware, its study is beset with difficulties. These difficulties include a lack of extant Neo-Elamite inscriptions that provide a chronological narrative or even a sequence of kings; a lack of confident translation and understanding of many Neo-Elamite inscriptions that are extant; and a subsequent, nec- essary reliance on Mesopotamian source material coupled with a corre- sponding inability to connect the information therein with the relatively scant Neo-Elamite material. Such textual problems are frequently com- pounded by incomplete or disparate archaeological evidence. Despite this pessimistic outlook and the typically provisional nature of assessments reached upon study of such material, there is much to be done. Increased attention and effort on both Mesopotamian and Elamite sources, as well as archaeological material, allow continuing refinement of our still nascent understanding of the Neo-Elamite period. At present, Assyrian sources still provide the most comprehensive collection of mate- rial about the Neo-Elamites. Of particular concern here is the extended family of the kings Huban-haltas I, Huban-haltas II, Urtak, and Te’umman. It would be much easier to refer to this group with one name, by the father of the four brothers (see below), but the identity of the father — and per- haps there was more than one — is unknown. The description “extended family” applies surely not only to those rela- tionships described here. There is no doubt that previous and subsequent Elamite royalty and nobility had similarly numerous relations, but these are minimally extant in the source material. Historians cannot choose their sources, and the period of greatest documentation for Neo-Elamite history coincides with the reigns of Urtak and his successors, that period concur- rent with increased Assyrian involvement in Elamite affairs, c. 675-645. The first dynasty (if I may use the term loosely for this period) runs as follows, as relayed by the Babylonian Chronicle and Assyrian annals: Iranica Antiqua, vol. XLI, 2006 doi: 10.2143/IA.41.0.2004760