City Lament

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A City Lament is a poetic elegy for a lost or fallen city. This literary genre, from around 2000 BCE onwards, was particularly prevalent in the Mesopotamian region of the Ancient Near East. [1] The Bible's Book of Lamentations concerning Jerusalem around 586 BCE, contains some elements of a city lament. [2]

Contents

Features

In the five known Mesopotamian City Laments, the lament is written in voice of the city's tutelary goddess.[ citation needed ]

The destruction of the city, the mass killing of its inhabitants, and the loss of its central temple are vividly described. Special attention is given to the divine sphere, where the gods order the destruction of the city, the city patron gods implore against this, but in vain. The patron gods are exiled to live as deportees in foreign cites, lamenting their devastated shrine. Subsequently they return from exile and renew their former existence. [3]

Mesopotamia

The Lament for Ur, or Lamentation over the city of Ur is a Sumerian lament composed around the time of the fall of Ur to the Elamites and the end of the city's third dynasty around 2000 BCE.

The Lament for Sumer and Ur concerns the events of 2004 BCE, during the last year of King Ibbi-Sin's reign, when Ur fell to an army from the east. [4] :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". [5] :117

The Lament for Eridu. Unlike Ur or Akkad we don't have a good idea of how Eridu actually fell, or when other than in the Early Dynastic period. The Sumerian King List simply says "Then Eridug fell and the kingship was taken to Bad-tibira". [6] [7] [8] This lament also describes how the loss of favor with the gods led to its fall.

There was also a Lament for Uruk and a Lament for Nippur. [9] [10]

The literary works of the Sumerians were widely translated by, for example, the Hittites, Hurrians and Canaanites.[ citation needed ] Samuel Noah Kramer suggests that subsequent Greek as well as Hebrew texts "were profoundly influenced by them." [11] 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)." [5] :118

Hebrew Bible

In the Jewish tradition, this genre also appears over a millennium later in the Hebrew Bible, particularly in reference to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. [1] The similarities are, however, of motif rather than of form; in other respects, the Hebrew genre is quite different from its Sumerian predecessors. [12]

Lamentations

The Book of Lamentations shares some motifs with earlier Mesopotamian laments. [2] Whereas the Mesopotamian laments are in the voice of the city's tutelary goddess, Lamentations, with its monotheistic background, is instead tenderly addressed as "Daughter Jerusalem" and "Daughter Zion". [13] :317 [14]

Like its Mesopotamian predecessors, it personifies the city, grieves over its destruction by God, and prays that calamity will overtake its destroyers. Unlike them, God does not weep over the destroyed sanctuary, nor does it portray a rebuilding, nor give praise for such a prospect. [15] :45

Other occurrences

Much of the postexilic scroll of Isaiah concerns the destroyed and restored city of Jerusalem.

Laments can also be found in the Book of Jeremiah, the Book of Ezekiel and the Book of Psalms, Psalm 137. [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Book of Lamentations</span> Book of the Bible

The Book of Lamentations is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible it appears in the Ketuvim ("Writings") as one of the Five Megillot alongside the Song of Songs, Book of Ruth, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Esther although there is no set order. In the Christian Old Testament it follows the Book of Jeremiah, as the prophet Jeremiah is its traditional author. However, according to modern scholarship, while the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586/7 BCE forms the background to the poems, they were probably not written by Jeremiah. Most likely, each of the book's chapters was written by a different anonymous poet, and they were then joined to form the book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enki</span> God in Sumerian mythology

Enki is the Sumerian god of water, knowledge (gestú), crafts (gašam), and creation (nudimmud), and one of the Anunnaki. He was later known as Ea or Ae in Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian) religion, and is identified by some scholars with Ia in Canaanite religion. The name was rendered Aos in Greek sources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eridu</span> Archaeological site in Iraq

Eridu is an archaeological site in southern Mesopotamia. Eridu was long considered the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia. Located 12 km southwest of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew around temples, almost in sight of one another. These buildings were made of mud brick and built on top of one another. With the temples growing upward and the village growing outward, a larger city was built. In Sumerian mythology, Eridu was originally the home of Enki, later known by the Akkadians as Ea, who was considered to have founded the city. His temple was called E-Abzu, as Enki was believed to live in Abzu, an aquifer from which all life was believed to stem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Sumer</span> History of the Mesopotamian area called Sumer

The history of Sumer spans the 5th to 3rd millennia BCE in southern Mesopotamia, and is taken to include the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods. Sumer was the region's earliest known civilization and ended with the downfall of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE. It was followed by a transitional period of Amorite states before the rise of Babylonia in the 18th century BCE.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Me (mythology)</span> Sumerian name given to the laws of the gods

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lugal-zage-si</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lament for Ur</span> Sumerian lament

The Lament for Ur, or Lamentation over the city of Ur is a Sumerian lament composed around the time of the fall of Ur to the Elamites and the end of the city's third dynasty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ištaran</span> Mesopotamian god

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubur</span> Sumerian term; usually the "river of the netherworld"

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anu</span> Ancient Mesopotamian god of the sky. Gods of all gods.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lament for Sumer and Ur</span>

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.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lament for Nippur</span> Sumerian lament

The Lament for Nippur, or the Lament for Nibru, is a Sumerian lament, also known by its incipit tur3 me nun-e. It is dated to the Old Babylonian Empire. It is preserved in Penn Museum on tablet CBS13856.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lament for Uruk</span> Sumerian lament

The Lament for Uruk, also called the Uruk Lament or the Lament for Unug, is a Sumerian lament. It is dated to the Isin-Larsa period.

References

  1. 1 2 Boyadjian, Tamar M. (2018). The City Lament. Cornell University Press. ISBN   978-1501730535.
  2. 1 2 Hayes 1998, p. 168.
  3. Samet, Nili. "The Sumerian City Laments and the Book of Lamentations: A Comparative Theological View". The Torah.com. Retrieved 29 January 2022.
  4. Michalowski, Piotr (1989). The lamentation over the destruction of Sumer and Ur.
  5. 1 2 Niehaus, Jeffrey Jay (2008). Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology.
  6. Vincente, Claudine-Adrienne (1995-01-01). "The Tall Leilãn Recension of the Sumerian King List". Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie (in German). 85 (2): 234–270. doi:10.1515/zava.1995.85.2.234. ISSN   1613-1150. S2CID   163785116.
  7. Green, M. W., "The Eridu Lament.", JCS 30: pp. 127–67, 1978
  8. Ilan Peled. “A NEW MANUSCRIPT OF THE LAMENT FOR ERIDU.” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 67, 2015, pp. 39–43, https://doi.org/10.5615/jcunestud.67.2015.0039
  9. Green, 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
  10. Tinney, 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
  11. Kramer, Samuel Noah. "The Sumerians: Their history, culture and character" (PDF). p. 196. Retrieved 29 January 2022.
  12. Heskitt, Randall (2011). Reading the Book of Isaiah: Destruction and Lament in the Holy Cities. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN   978-1349297504.
  13. Carvalho, Corinne L (2010). Encountering Ancient Voices: A Guide to Reading the Old Testament. Anselm Academic. ISBN   978-1599820507.
  14. Adelman, Rachel (2021). "Daughter Zion (Bat Tzion)". The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Retrieved 29 January 2022.
  15. Goldingay, John (2022). The Book of Lamentations. Eerdmans. ISBN   978-0-8028-2542-1.
  16. Matthews, Victor Harold; Benjamin, Don C. (2006). Old Testament parallels: laws and stories from the ancient Near East. Paulist Press. pp. 248ff. ISBN   978-0-8091-4435-8 . Retrieved 4 June 2011.

Bibliography