Lament for Sumer and Ur


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:
In 2004 BCE, during the last year of King Ibbi-Sin's reign, Ur fell to an army from the east. 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 fate"
The literary works of the Sumerians were widely translated, and the world-renowned expert in Sumerian history, Samuel Noah Kramer, wrote that later Greek as well as Hebrew texts "were profoundly influenced by them." Contemporary scholars have drawn parallels between the lament and passages from the bible."