It was located at the head of the Persian Gulf in Susiana (the present-day region of Khuzestan, Iran).

[3] The region's "wealth in silver and gold" is referred to in the deutero-canonical work 1 Maccabees, which refers to Elymais as a "city" of interest to Antiochus IV Epiphanes: the narrative there states that "its temple was very rich, containing golden coverings, breastplates, and weapons left there by Alexander son of Philip, the Macedonian king who first reigned over the Greeks.

The kingdom of Elymais survived until its extinction by a Sasanian invasion in the early 3rd century AD.

The royal picture is generally based on Parthian coinage, usually with an anchor with a star in crescent figure.

The reverse has a figure or bust of Artemis with text around it, an eagle, or often only elongated dots (this has led numismatists to believe that the engravers didn't know Greek or copied from coins whose writing was already unintelligible).