Lament for Sumer and Ur
The Sumerian lament for the fall of the Ur III empire to Elamite invasion, around 2000 BCE. Composed anonymously in the scribal tradition.
- 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 Sumer and Ur describes, city by city, the storm the gods decree against the land: the Elamite invasion that ended the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE, with king Ibbi-Sin led away in fetters. It is the most sweeping of the Sumerian city laments, national catastrophe rendered as liturgy. The composition is anonymous, the work of temple scribes writing within a generation or two of the events. Whoever found the words for the end of a civilization did not record a name.
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