Increased reliance
Early council records preserve debate before consultation. Late records increasingly preserve consultation followed directly by execution. This contrast may partly reflect changing scribal practice, but it is consistent with a wider transfer of decision-making authority toward Naru.
Rising silence
The 867 BCE register records a sharp increase in unanswered questions. No surviving text explains the cause.
Political response
Royal texts show pressure on the Questioners to restore reliable consultation. Failure became a matter of state security rather than scholarly uncertainty.
Religious crisis
Priestly interpretations divided. Some texts frame silence as withdrawal or punishment; others describe renewed purification and offering.
Crisis within the Questioners’ House
Questioners continued to classify and compare failures while facing professional penalties. The institution split between procedural, religious, and royalist responses.
Fragmentation
Naduma did not vanish in a single destruction event. Administrative coordination weakened over several years, local authorities acted more independently, and trained specialists dispersed. The relationship between Naru’s silence and the political disappearance of Naduma remains debated.