The Babylonian Entitlement narus (kudurrus): A Study in Their Form and Function.

• Author: Hurowitz, Victor Avigdor
• Position: Book review

The Babylonian Entitlement narus (kudurrus): A Study in Their Form and Function. By KATHRYN E. SLANSKI. ASOR Books, vol. 9. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2003. Pp. xxi + 362, illus. $29.95.

The approximately 160 inscribed and engraved stone artifacts originating in fourteenth through seventeenth century B.C.E. southern Mesopotamia and long designated as kudurrus, have been known in the West since the turn of the nineteenth century, and until recently have been considered "boundary stones." They report royal grants to certain high-ranking personages of land, tax exemptions, and priestly privileges, are decorated with divine symbols or cultic scenes, and conclude with imprecations protecting the items themselves and the grants. They have importance for the study of iconography, religion, and especially the society, administration, and economy of the period and area they represent, from the time of Kassite domination of Babylonia until the rule of Assyrian kings there. Often, they have been taken as relics of a feudal regime in which the king controlled land through a hierarchy of lesser nobility. As the term "boundary stone" indicates, the so-called kudurrus were thought to stand at the edges of fields as property markers.

Kathryn E. Slanski, in a slightly revised version of her 1997 Harvard Ph.D. dissertation, now presents a long-awaited and thoroughly convincing analysis of these objects, establishing their native designation not as kudurru but as naru (standing stone/stone monument; cf. Hebrew massebah), and their nature not as boundary stones standing in fields, warding off trespassers but as durable monuments displayed before the gods in temples to solicit divine protection of the privileges granted. Slanski, extensively building upon a new view of the artifacts proposed by Brinkman, (1) suggests calling them "entitlement narus (monuments)." Only time will tell whether this term will supplant the venerable and mellifluous kudurru in scholarly parlance, but one should note that three "entitlement monuments" refer to themselves as kudurrus, thereby permitting those bound by habit to adhere to tradition.

The book contains an introduction discussing scholarship from publication of the Caillou Michaux in 1801, through the works of Hinke, Steinmetzer, Seidl, and Brinkman (1980-83), and a conclusion, along with six other chapters. Chapter two, which lays the foundation of the book, determines through close reading of numerous...