What do you think?
Rate this book
The Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur
This work presents for the first time in its entirety the long Sumerian poem describing the destruction and suffering in Babylonia during the final days of the Third Dynasty of Ur. The text is both an important work of native historiography and a moving literary composition. The author's introduction places the work within the Sumerian literary tradition, and evaluates it as a historical source. Indexes and copies of unpublished texts are included.
264 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
17 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Read
October 13, 2025“My heart is dark, I am destroyed, I am in chaos, I have been devastated!”
Lamentations were a standard genre in ancient Mesopotamia. The texts collected in this book are related to the decline of what is called the 3rd Dynasty of Ur. That Sumerian Empire flourished again about 2100 BCE, with explicit reference to the Sumerian glory period, some 500 years before. Ur III is one of the most richly documented episodes in early history. But it went down around 2000 BCE, possibly due to a combination of internal tensions, incursions by (semi) nomads and crop failures caused by climate change. All the lamentations in these texts indicate that demise as a conscious decision of the gods, led by the supreme god Enlil.
The Lamentation of Sumer and Ur, in particular, is extraordinary detailed in its description of the plagues that Enlil poured out on southern Mesopotamia; it is an impressive torrent of misery, both in its general description as through the lamentations of concrete persons. This text is also fairly well structured. The other lamentations (for Nibru, Ur and Eridug) are much more fragmented and much more repetitive, which makes the reading and interpretation very difficult.
The lamenters constantly ask the question why they have earned their misery: “O Enlil, why have you turned away from my Urim which was built for you?” In general, these texts exude fatalism: you cannot change what the gods have decided. Only in the Lamentation for Sumer and Ur does Enlil in person bring forward a justification: what arises must eventually perish, nothing is forever: “From time immemorial, since the Land was founded, until people multiplied, who has ever seen a reign of kingship that would take precedence forever? The reign of its kingship had been long indeed but had to exhaust itself.” And as it turns out, some of the other gods eventually manage to convince the supreme god Enlil to stop the scourging of the land.
In some of the lamentations attention is then given to the reconstruction order, and those texts provide some insight into the material and intangible culture of the Sumerians. The Lamentation for Nibru even contains a rare call for social justice: “a time to establish humility in the Land, for the inferior to be as important as the mighty, a time when the younger brother, fearing his big brother, is to show humility , a time when the elder child is to treat the younger child reasonably and to pay heed to his words, a time to take neither weak nor strong away into captivity, but to serve with great acts of good, a time to travel the disordered roadways , to extirpate evil growths”.
As a historical source, these lamentations provide only limited information, but as a dramatic expression of how a society records what has gone wrong and why, they are telling indeed. In a way it's a very human effort to come to terms with the precariousness of life and the complex and chaotic character of reality.
A link to the text of The Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur(im): https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section...
A link to the text of The Lament of Urim: https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin...#
Lamentations were a standard genre in ancient Mesopotamia. The texts collected in this book are related to the decline of what is called the 3rd Dynasty of Ur. That Sumerian Empire flourished again about 2100 BCE, with explicit reference to the Sumerian glory period, some 500 years before. Ur III is one of the most richly documented episodes in early history. But it went down around 2000 BCE, possibly due to a combination of internal tensions, incursions by (semi) nomads and crop failures caused by climate change. All the lamentations in these texts indicate that demise as a conscious decision of the gods, led by the supreme god Enlil.
The Lamentation of Sumer and Ur, in particular, is extraordinary detailed in its description of the plagues that Enlil poured out on southern Mesopotamia; it is an impressive torrent of misery, both in its general description as through the lamentations of concrete persons. This text is also fairly well structured. The other lamentations (for Nibru, Ur and Eridug) are much more fragmented and much more repetitive, which makes the reading and interpretation very difficult.
The lamenters constantly ask the question why they have earned their misery: “O Enlil, why have you turned away from my Urim which was built for you?” In general, these texts exude fatalism: you cannot change what the gods have decided. Only in the Lamentation for Sumer and Ur does Enlil in person bring forward a justification: what arises must eventually perish, nothing is forever: “From time immemorial, since the Land was founded, until people multiplied, who has ever seen a reign of kingship that would take precedence forever? The reign of its kingship had been long indeed but had to exhaust itself.” And as it turns out, some of the other gods eventually manage to convince the supreme god Enlil to stop the scourging of the land.
In some of the lamentations attention is then given to the reconstruction order, and those texts provide some insight into the material and intangible culture of the Sumerians. The Lamentation for Nibru even contains a rare call for social justice: “a time to establish humility in the Land, for the inferior to be as important as the mighty, a time when the younger brother, fearing his big brother, is to show humility , a time when the elder child is to treat the younger child reasonably and to pay heed to his words, a time to take neither weak nor strong away into captivity, but to serve with great acts of good, a time to travel the disordered roadways , to extirpate evil growths”.
As a historical source, these lamentations provide only limited information, but as a dramatic expression of how a society records what has gone wrong and why, they are telling indeed. In a way it's a very human effort to come to terms with the precariousness of life and the complex and chaotic character of reality.
A link to the text of The Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur(im): https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section...
A link to the text of The Lament of Urim: https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin...#
Read
May 1, 20224.000-year old lamentations on human suffering, attributing all calamities to the will of the gods. A classic genre in Ancient Mesopotamia. More on this in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
September 19, 2021
It was a sad read. It was truly a sad read. The people of Urum suffered a lot. The city of Urum suffered a lot. The storm that smote Urum was sad to read. The destruction that smote Urum was truly sad to read!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews