The "Ur-Nammu" Stela.

• Author: Winter, Irene J.
• Position: Reviews of Books - Book Review

The "Ur-Nammu" Stela. By JEANNY VORYS CANBY. University Museum Monographs, vol. 110. Philadelphia: UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY, 2001. Pp. xiv + 58, plates. $49.95.

The "Ur-Nammu" stela, found in fragments scattered within the sacred precinct of the moon-god Nannu/Su'en of Ur in the 1920s, was restored in 1927 to stand in the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania as a proud monument to the first ruler of the Third Dynasty of Ur. However imperfect its restoration, the monument was the one example in the U.S. that could be experienced as a monument, comparable to the stelae of Eannatum of Lagash, Naram-Sin of Agade, and Hammurabi of Babylon in the Louvre. It was dismantled in 1989 to allow for a new study of its fragments by the author of the present volume.

This long-awaited monograph is actually an essay of twenty-seven pages, augmented by a catalogue of those fragments attributed to the work plus three appendices--the first by Steve Tinney on the text associated with the stela (pp. 49-51), the second by Tamsen Fuller on the conservation of the stela fragments in the course of its dismantling (pp. 53-54), and the third a catalogue of fragments once thought to have been part of the stela, but now eliminated (pp. 55-56).

The essay details the discovery of the stela fragments and its early reconstruction, noting that all prior reconstructions, including the author's own of 1987 and 1993, have been significantly flawed. It then proceeds to document the author's current reconstruction of the two faces of the monument, referred to as the "good" side, with its relatively unweathered surface, and the "poor" side, subject in antiquity to abrasion and erosion through exposure to the elements (pls. 10 and 11, respectively).

Many interpretive interpolations have gone into the reconstructions of the two sides. Additionally, Canby notes that a group of fragments currently in the University Museum are likely to have been part of the stela, but have not been incorporated into the present reconstructions. Referred to as "floating" figures (p. 5 and pl. 12), the author generously records her hope that their publication will serve as an "incentive for further study," and ultimately permit their identification and inclusion into the monument.

Anticipating such further study, a number of points for discussion arise.

1. Findspots of fragments. Canby reports on C. Leonard Woolley's (sometimes inconsistent) descriptions of the various field locations of fragments attributed to the stela within the sacred precinct. Unfortunately, however, she reproduces maps used by Woolley in his various publications (pls. 5 and 6a), the building designations and terminology on which frequently do not correspond to the descriptions, and it is therefore very hard to reconstruct exact loci from her text. (For example, Room 17 of the E.dublal.mah is mentioned [p. 2], but on the plan no room designations are given; the Kassite period Ningal temple is mentioned [p. 3], however does not appear on either plan, although from later in the text [p. 7] one may glean that the temple formed part of the Giparu.) If the old maps were to have been used, it would have been helpful to have added symbols marking where fragments were found. But even more, this would have been an excellent occasion to redraw the plans altogether, with relevant information and clearly marked loci, particularly as important conclusions depend upon these findspots: for example, the original placement of the monument--whether it stood originally on a base in the courtyard of the E.dublal.mah or in the great "Court of Nanna" to the north (cf. pp. 3 and 7 n. 45), and whether it was destroyed in situ, or subject to more than one phase of...