Lament for Nippur

{{short description|Sumerian lament}}

File:Ruins from a temple in Naffur.jpg (mountain temple) in Nippur: the Lament reads, The brickwork of E-kur gave you only tears and lamentation -- it sings a bitter song of the proper cleansing-rites that are forgotten! It weeps bitter tears over the splendid rites and most precious plans which are desecrated -- its most sacred food rations neglected and ...... into funeral offerings, it cries "Alas!". The temple despairs of its divine powers, utterly cleansed, pure, hallowed, which are now defiled!{{Cite web|url=https://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/myths/texts/lamentations/lamentnippur.html|title=Lamentation for Nippur|website=www.gatewaystobabylon.com}}]]

The Lament for Nippur, or the Lament for Nibru, is a Sumerian lament, also known by its incipit tur₃ me nun-e ("After the cattle pen...").{{Cite journal|url=https://www.academia.edu/19989469|title=The city lament genre in the ancient Near East (in The fall of cities in the Mediterranean: Commemoration in literature, folk-song, and liturgy, ed. Mary Bachvarova, Dorota Dutsch, and Ann Suter, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 13–35)|first=John|last=Jacobs|date=January 1, 2016|via=www.academia.edu}} It is dated to the Old Babylonian Empire ({{circa|1900–1600 BCE}}).{{Cite web|url=https://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P469683|title=CDLI-Archival View|website=cdli.ucla.edu}} It is preserved in Penn Museum on tablet CBS13856.{{Cite web|url=https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/347141|title=Tablet - CBS13856 | Collections - Penn Museum|website=www.penn.museum}}

It is one of five known Mesopotamian "city laments"—dirges for ruined cities in the voice of the city's tutelary goddess.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ma_qDwAAQBAJ&q=%22lament+for+nippur%22++&pg=PT214|title=The Essential Poet's Glossary|first=Edward|last=Hirsch|date=April 4, 2017|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|isbn=9780544932098 |via=Google Books}}

File:God Enlil, seated, from Nippur, Iraq. 1800-1600 BCE. Iraq Museum.jpg Enlil from Nippur, {{circa|1800–1600 BCE}}.]]

File:Hammurabi's Babylonia 1.svg