Los narûs (kudurrus) babilónicos del Bronce Final y el Hierro: The Babylonian narû (kudurrētu) in Late Bronze and Iron Age

Abstract

Babylonian naru, traditionally named kudurrētu, were stone monuments with divine representations (generally through its divine emblems) and figurative scenes with anthropomorphic figures, together with an administrative text about a land grant. These naru originated in Kassite Babylon and were being used until Neo-Babylonian Period (ca. 1400-650 a.C.). The majority of them have been discovered in Susa without contextualizing, because the items which have been found in situ tell us that their original placement was Southern Mesopotamia.  In this paper, the main aim is to study the naru corpus, currently formed by 178 items, in a interdisciplinar way, that is to say, analyzing the information which their texts, iconography, materiality, archaeological context, etc. give us. This is the reason why the author of this article will try to define the corpus according to their own inscriptions and according to the main previous studies of several scholars on this subject. Then, the circumstances which could cause the rising and the historical and political events which could affect their development will be studied, together with the geographical context which they expand on. Subsequently, the content of their inscripctions and symbology of their iconography will be analyzed in a comparative approach. Finally, the main results of this research will be shown in a conclusions paragraph.