Kudurrus of ancient Babylon

A kudurrus is an ancient Babylonian stone with an inscription that records a land grant, usually between the ruling monarch and a subject.  It's name is derived from kudurru, the Akkadian word for boundary.  The only kudurrus excavated in ancient Babylonian sites were found in temples where they would have served to record the transaction and to protect the rights of owner by legal as well as divine means.

Inscriptions usually provided the location of the plot of land, the boundaries of its four sides, the name of the surveyor of the property and the names of witnesses to the transaction. To provide divine protection of the relationship, a kudurrus also often included many symbols of deities such as the crescent, symbol of the moon-god Sin, the solar disk of the sun god Shamash, and the eight-pointed star of the goddess Ishtar/Inanna.

A Kassite example I photographed at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago was cast from an original in the British Museum.  The Kassites rose to power after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire and ruled from 1595 BCE until about 1155 BCE. The Kassites were members of a small military aristocracy but were efficient rulers and locally popular. Their 500-year reign laid an essential groundwork for the development of subsequent Babylonian culture. The chariot and the horse, which the Kassites worshipped, first came into use in Babylonia at this time. Kassite rulers in Babylon, though, were scrupulous to follow existing forms of expression, and the public and private patterns of behavior which was probably an important factor in their popularity.

Although the Kassite kings ruled conservatively, they were conquered in the 12th century BCE by the neighboring Elamites. They regained control briefly during Babylonian Dynasty V (1025-1004 BCE) but were then deposed by the Arameans. The Kassite people, however, survived as a dstinct ethic group in the mountains of Luristan long afterwards. Babylonian records describe how the Assyrian king Sennacherib on his eastern campaign of 702 BCE subdued the Kassites in a battle near Hulwan, Iran. During the later Achaemenid period, the Kassites, referred to as "Kossaei", lived in the mountains to the east of Media and were one of several "predatory" mountain tribes that regularly extracted "gifts" from the Achaemenid Persians, according to a citation of Nearchus by Strabo (13.3.6). However, they fought with the Persians against Alexander the Great in the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE. According to Diodorus Siculus (17.59) and Curtius Rufus (4.12), Alexander later launched a winter attack against the Kassites and put an end to their tribute-seeking raids.


Kudurrus recording a grant of land by Marduk-nadin-ahhe, King of Babylon to Adad-zer-iqisha 12th century BCE (cast) at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago (original in the British Museum)

There are more images of interesting kuddurru on Wikimedia Commons:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Kudurru


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