Lament for Eridu
A Sumerian city lament mourning the destruction of Eridu, the oldest of cities. Composed by unnamed scribes in the early second millennium BCE.
- Original byline
- Anonymous
- Published
- Date not recorded
- Form
- Poems
- Authorship
- Still unknown
- Reason for anonymity
- Unrecorded
- Copyright
- Public domain
- Reference
- Wikipedia · Wikidata
The authorship story
The Lament for Eridu mourns the god Enki's city, the place Mesopotamian tradition counted as the first city of all, describing its sanctuaries abandoned and its rites silenced. It belongs to the small group of Sumerian city laments composed after the fall of the Ur III state, around 2000 BCE, when scribes gave liturgical form to catastrophe. No author is named in the tradition; the laments were institutional poetry, performed to mark destruction and restoration. The griefs are specific and the poets anonymous.
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