Susanchites

The Susanchites — spelled Shushanchites in the UPDV — appear in a single verse, as one item in a long list of resettled peoples whom the Assyrian king Osnappar transplanted into Samaria and the territory beyond the River. They are the people of Susa (Shushan), set down in the western administrative zone after deportation.

In the Letter to Artaxerxes

The Susanchites surface inside the opening of an Aramaic letter complaining to the Persian king about the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Among the senders are listed peoples from many corners of the empire who had been resettled around Samaria: "then [wrote] Rehum the chancellor, and Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their fellow slaves, the Dinaites, and the Apharsathchites, the Tarpelites, the Apharsites, the Archevites, the Babylonians, the Shushanchites, the Dehaites, the Elamites" (Ezr 4:9). The next verse names the policy that placed them there: "and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar brought over, and set in the city of Samaria, and in the rest [of the country] beyond the River, and so forth" (Ezr 4:10). The Shushanchites stand alongside Babylonians and Elamites in this list, identified by the eastern city from which they were uprooted, and now reckoned among the inhabitants of Samaria.