Lament for Sumer and Ur

{{Short description|Poem}}

File:Lament for ur (cropped).JPG at the Louvre Museum in Paris]]

The lament for Sumer and Urim or the lament for Sumer and Ur is a poem and one of five known Mesopotamian "city laments"—dirges for ruined cities in the voice of the city's tutelary goddess.

The other city laments are:

• The Lament for Ur
• The Lament for NippurTinney, Steve. The Nippur lament: royal rhetoric and divine legitimation in the reign of Išme-Dagan of Isin (1953-1935 BC). University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1996
• The Lament for Eridu
• The Lament for UrukGreen, M. W. “The Uruk Lament.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 104, no. 2, 1984, pp. 253–79. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/602171

In 2004 BCE, during the last year of King Ibbi-Sin's reign, Ur fell to an Elamite army leading by king Kindattu of Shimashki.The lamentation over the destruction of Sumer and Ur, Piotr Michalowski, 1989, p. 1 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 [Ur's] fate"Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology, By Jeffrey Jay Niehaus, 2008, p. 117

The literary works of the Sumerians were widely translated (e.g., by the Hittites, Hurrians and Canaanites). Sumeria historian Samuel Noah Kramer wrote that later Greek as well as Hebrew texts "were profoundly influenced by them."[http://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/sumerians.pdf The Sumerians: Their history, culture and character], Samuel Noah Kramer, p. 196 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