United States or Kyrgyzstan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A notable contribution to the interpretation of the Kudurru monuments was made by Belser, in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, ii. 111-203. It still seems most plausible to regard the pictures as symbols of spirits or demons. Such an interpretation is in accord with the Babylonian and general Semitic view of land ownership.
Symbols of these spirits serpents, unicorns, scorpions, and the like are added on the monuments which were placed at the boundaries, and on which the terms were specified that justified the land tenure. To this class of monuments the name of 'Kudurru, or 'boundary' stones, was given by the Babylonians themselves.
Professor Hilprecht, in 1882-83, was working at a translation of an inscription wherein came Nabu Kudurru usur, rendered by Professor Delitzsch "Nebo protect my mortar-board". Professor Hilprecht accepted this, but woke one morning with his mind full of the thought that the words should be rendered "Nebo protect my boundary," which "sounds a deal likelier," and is now accepted.
They were placed there as guardians of the property to which the kudurru referred, and it was believed that the carving of their figures or emblems upon the stone would ensure their intervention in case of any attempted infringement of the rights and privileges which it was the object of the document to commemorate and preserve.
These inscriptions consist of grants of land written on roughly shaped stone stelæ, a class which the Babylonians themselves called kudurru, while they have been frequently referred to by modern writers as "boundary-stones." This latter term is not very happily chosen, for it suggests that the actual monuments themselves were set up on the limits of a field or estate to mark its boundary.
It is true that the inscription on a kudurru enumerates the exact position and size of the estate with which it is concerned, but the kudurru was never actually used to mark the boundary.
Thus a broken kudurru among M. de Morgan's finds records the confirmation of a man's claims to certain property by Biti-liash II, the claims being based on a grant made to the man's ancestor by Kurigalzu for services rendered to the king during his war with Assyria.
A photographic reproduction of one side of the kudurru of Nazi-maruttash is shown in the accompanying illustration. There will be seen a representation of Gula or Bau, the mother of the gods, who is portrayed as seated on her throne and wearing the four-horned head-dress and a long robe that reaches to her feet.
Eannatum and Gudea of Lagash both place her immediately after Anu and Enlil, giving her precedence over Enki; and even in the Kassite Kudurru inscriptions of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries, where she is referred to, she takes rank after Enki and before the other gods.
Word Of The Day