The lament for Sumer and Urim or the lament for Sumer and Ur is a

poem Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

and one of five known Mesopotamian "city laments"—

dirge A dirge () is a somber song or lament expressing mourning or grief, such as may be appropriate for performance at a funeral. Often taking the form of a brief hymn, dirges are typically shorter and less meditative than elegy, elegies. Dirges are of ...

s for ruined cities in the voice of the city's tutelary goddess. The other city laments are: *The

Lament for Ur The Lament for Ur, or Lamentation over the city of Ur is a Sumerian lament composed around the time of the fall of Ur to the Elamites and the end of the city's third dynasty (c. 2000 BC). Laments It contains one of five known Mesopotamian ...

*The Lament for Nippur *The Lament for Eridu *The Lament for Uruk In 2004 BCE, during the last year of King Ibbi-Sin's reign, Ur fell to an

Elamite Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Scythic, Median, Amardian, Anshanian and Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was recorded in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite i ...

army leading by king Kindattu of Shimashki. The Sumerians decided that such a catastrophic event could only be explained through divine intervention and wrote in the lament that the gods, "An, Enlil, Enki and Ninmah decided r'sfate" The literary works of the Sumerians were widely translated (e.g., by the

Hittites The Hittites () were an Anatolian peoples, Anatolian Proto-Indo-Europeans, Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of the Bronze Age in West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea, they settled in mo ...

Hurrians The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria, upper Mesopotamia and southeaste ...

and

Canaanites {{Cat main, Canaan See also: * :Ancient Israel and Judah Ancient Levant Hebrew Bible nations Ancient Lebanon 0050 Ancient Syria Wikipedia categories named after regions 0050 0050 Phoenicia Amarna Age civilizations ...

). Sumeria historian Samuel Noah Kramer wrote that later

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

as well as

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

texts "were profoundly influenced by them." Contemporary scholars have drawn parallels between the lament and passages from the bible (e.g., "the Lord departed from his temple and stood on the mountain east of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 10:18-19)."Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology, By Jeffrey Jay Niehaus, 2008, 118

References

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External links

Translation of the ''Lament for Sumer and Urim''
from the

Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) is an online digital library of texts and translations of Sumerian language, Sumerian literature that was created by a now-completed project based at the Oriental Institute, Oxford, Orient ...

Sumerian texts Clay tablets Mesopotamian myths Comparative mythology Ur Poems about cities