Statue of the Goddess Narundi
Unknown · Awan dynasty, reign of Puzur-Inshushinak, c. 2120-2100 BC
A goddess sits on a throne, wrapped in a heavy garment of tufted wool that falls in overlapping tiers, the kaunakes that marks divine and royal figures in this period. Her hands are held in front of her, and she wears a horned headdress, the sign of a deity. Lions guard the throne on either side, carved in low relief along its base. The head and the body were found separately and reunited. Look for the two inscriptions on the throne: one in Akkadian cuneiform, the other in Linear Elamite, a script that has only recently begun to be read.
The goddess is Narundi, a deity of the Elamite pantheon, and the dedication names the ruler Puzur-Inshushinak, the last king of the Awan dynasty who made Susa briefly independent of the Akkadian empire around 2100 before our era. His reign is the moment when Elam asserted its own identity, and the bilingual text is part of that programme: the same message written in the Mesopotamian script of the conquerors and in the native script of Elam. The statue was excavated on the acropolis of Susa by the French mission and came to the Louvre through the excavation partage.
Did You Know? The throne carries the same dedication twice, once in Akkadian cuneiform and once in Linear Elamite, a script that scholars only began to decipher convincingly in the twenty-first century.
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