r Kassite Dynasty, to the god Marduk, that is to say they
were assigned by the king to the service of E-sagila, the great temple
of Marduk at Babylon.

[Illustration: 256.jpg A KUDURRU OR "BOUNDARY-STONE."]

Inscribed with a text of Nazimaruttash, a king of the Third
or Kassite Dynasty, conferring certain estates near Babylon
on the temple of Marduk and on a certain man named Kashakti-
Shugab. The photograph is reproduced from M. de Morgan's
Delegation en Perse, Mem., t. ii, pi, 18.

All the crops and produce from the land were granted for the supply of
the temple, which was to enjoy the property without the payment of any
tax or tribute. The text also records the gift of considerable tracts of
land in the same district to a private individual named Kashakti-Shugab,
who was to enjoy a similar freedom from taxation so far as the lands
bestowed upon him were concerned.

This freedom from taxation is specially enacted by the document in
the words: "Whensoever in the days that are to come the ruler of the
country, or one of the governors, or directors, or wardens of these
districts, shall make any claim with regard to these estates, or shall
attempt to impose the payment of a tithe or tax upon them, may all the
great gods whose names are commemorated, or whose arms are portrayed, or
whose dwelling-places are represented, on this stone, curse him with an
evil curse and blot out his name!"

Incidentally, this curse illustrates one of the most striking
characteristics of the kudurrus, or "boundary-stones," viz. the carved
figures of gods and representations of their emblems, which all of them
bare in addition to the texts inscribed upon them. At one time it was
thought that these symbols were to be connected with the signs of the
zodiac and various constellations and stars, and it was suggested that
they might have been intended to represent the relative positions of the
heavenly bodies at the time the document was drawn up. But this text
of Nazimaruttash and other similar documents that have recently been
discovered prove that the presence of the figures and emblems of the
gods upon the stones is to be explained on another and far more simple
theory. They were placed there as guardians of the property to which the
kudurru referred, and it was believed that the carving of their figures
or emblems upon the stone would ensure their intervention in case of
any attempted infringement of the rights and