Land grant to Ḫunnubat-Nanaya kudurru
The Land grant to Ḫunnubat-Nanaya kudurru is an ancient Mesopotamian entitlement narû recording the gift of forty GUR of uncultivated land and control over three settlements by Kassite king Meli-Šipak to his daughter and the provision of exemptions from service and taxation to villages in the region guaranteed with a sealed tablet given to her, presumably to make the land transfer more palatable to the local population. It was excavated by a French archaeological team under the auspices of Jacques de Morgan at the turn of the twentieth century at Susa where it was found with a duplicate. It had been taken as booty by Elamite king Šutruk-Naḫḫunte after his 1158 BC campaign that brought about the demise of the regime of Babylonian king Zababa-šuma-iddina, the penultimate monarch of the Kassite dynasty. It is significant in that it shows the king making a second bequest with land he purchased to provide for his beneficiary, contradicting the earlier view of Kassite feudalism, where all land belonged to the monarch.
Land grant to Ḫunnubat-Nanaya kudurru
Meli-Šipak presents his daughter to the goddess Nannaya.
Meli-Šipak II, or alternatively Melišiḫu in contemporary inscriptions, was the 33rd king of the Kassite or 3rd Dynasty of Babylon c. 1186–1172 BC and ruled for 15 years. Tablets with two of his year names, 4 and 10, were found at Ur. His reign marks the critical synchronization point in the chronology of the Ancient Near East.
Meli-Shipak II on a kudurru-Land presenting his daughter Ḫunnubat-Nanaya to the goddess Nanaya. The eight-pointed star was Inanna-Ishtar's most common symbol. Here it is shown alongside the solar disk of her brother Shamash (Sumerian Utu) and the crescent moon of her father Sin (Sumerian Nanna) on a boundary stone of Meli-Shipak II, dating to the twelfth century BC.
Melišipak kudurru: Land grant to Marduk-apal-iddina I
Stele of the time of Meli-Shipak