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The "Ur-Nammu" Stela. By JEANNY VORYS CANBY. University Museum Monographs, vol. 110. Philadelphia: UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY, 2001. Pp. xiv + 58, plates. $49.95.
The "Ur-Nammu" stela, found in fragments scattered within the sacred precinct of the moon-god Nannu/Su'en of Ur in the 1920s, was restored in 1927 to stand in the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania as a proud monument to the first ruler of the Third Dynasty of Ur. However imperfect its restoration, the monument was the one example in the U.S. that could be experienced as a monument, comparable to the stelae of Eannatum of Lagash, Naram-Sin of Agade, and Hammurabi of Babylon in the Louvre. It was dismantled in 1989 to allow for a new study of its fragments by the author of the present volume.
This long-awaited monograph is actually an essay of twenty-seven pages, augmented by a catalogue of those fragments attributed to the work plus three appendices-the first by Steve Tinney on the text associated with the stela (pp. 49-51), the second by Tamsen Fuller on the conservation of the stela fragments in the course of its dismantling (pp. 53-54), and the third a catalogue of fragments once thought to have been part of the stela, but now eliminated (pp. 55-56).
The essay details the discovery of the stela fragments and its early reconstruction, noting that all prior reconstructions, including the author's own of 1987 and 1993, have been significantly flawed. It then proceeds to document the author's current reconstruction of the two faces of the monument, referred to as the "good" side, with its relatively unweathered surface, and the "poor" side, subject in antiquity to abrasion and erosion through exposure to the elements (pls. 10 and 11, respectively).
Many interpretive interpolations have gone into the reconstructions of the two sides. Additionally, Canby notes that a group of fragments currently in the University Museum are likely to have been purl of the stela, but have not been incorporated into the present reconstructions. Referred to as "floating" figures (p. 5 and pl. 12), the author generously records her hope that their publication will serve as an "incentive for further study," and ultimately permit their identification and inclusion into the monument.
Anticipating such further...