Kudurru with the Goddess Gula Seated on a Dog
Unknown · Kassite period, before the twelfth century BC
A stone slab about thirty-six centimetres high is engraved with a goddess seated on the back of a dog, her hands raised. She is Gula, goddess of healing, whose animal is the dog. Around her float twelve divine symbols, each standing for a god: the crescent of the moon god Sin, the star of Ishtar, the sun disc of Shamash, two shrines topped with horned crowns, a shrine with what may be a tortoise, the lamp of Nusku, a scorpion, a bird on a column, maces with the heads of a lion and a bird, the lightning fork of the storm god Adad, a serpent, and the spear of Marduk. The base is broken and the text was deliberately hammered away.
A kudurru is a Babylonian record of a royal land grant, carved in stone and placed in a temple, with the gods invoked as witnesses through their symbols. The erased inscription would have named the beneficiary and cursed anyone who challenged the gift. Made in Babylonia in the Kassite period, the stone was carried off to Susa in Iran as war booty in the twelfth century before our era, and the French mission that excavated Susa found it there.
Did You Know? Gula, the goddess of healing, rides a dog because dogs were sacred to her; dog figurines were buried under the thresholds of her temples.
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