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Sumerian lament
Remains of the
Ekur (mountain temple) in Nippur: the Lament reads, The brickwork of E-kur gave you only tears and lamentation -- it sings a bitter song of the proper cleansing-rites that are forgotten! It weeps bitter tears over the splendid rites and most precious plans which are desecrated -- its most sacred food rations neglected and ...... into funeral offerings, it cries "Alas!". The temple despairs of its divine powers, utterly cleansed, pure, hallowed, which are now defiled!
[1]
The Lament for Nippur , or the Lament for Nibru , is a
Sumerian
lament , also known by its
incipit tur3 me nun-e ("After the cattle pen...").
[2] It is dated to the
Old Babylonian Empire (
c. 1900–1600 BCE ).
[3] It is preserved in
Penn Museum on tablet CBS13856 .
[4]
It is one of five known
Mesopotamian "city laments" —
dirges for ruined cities in the voice of the city's
tutelary goddess .
[5]
Statuette of the
storm god
Enlil from Nippur,
c. 1800–1600 BCE .
Map of Mesopotamia around the time of the writing of the Lament for Nippur
Text
The Lament is composed of 9 kirugu (sections, songs) and 8 gišgigal (antiphons) followed by 3 more kirugu .
Numbered by kirugu , the lament is structured as follows:
storm of
Enlil ; Enlil destroys Nippur
weeping goddess; Nippur addresses Enlil
storm of Enlil; Enlil destroys Nippur
weeping goddess; the poet addresses Nippur
storm of Enlil;
Ishme-Dagan recreates Nippur
weeping goddess; the poet addresses Nippur
storm of Enlil; Ishme-Dagan recreates Nippur
storm of Enlil; Enlil recreates Nippur
storm of Enlil; Ishme-Dagan recreates Nippur
storm of Enlil; Enlil recreates Nippur
storm of Enlil; Ishme-Dagan recreates Nippur
storm of Enlil; Enlil recreates Nippur
[6]
It includes passages in the emesal , a
sociolect used by high-status women, showing the importance of women's voices in city laments; emesal is also found in the
Lament for Ur .
[7]
See also
References
^
"Lamentation for Nippur" . www.gatewaystobabylon.com .
^ Jacobs, John (January 1, 2016).
"The city lament genre in the ancient Near East (in The fall of cities in the Mediterranean: Commemoration in literature, folk-song, and liturgy, ed. Mary Bachvarova, Dorota Dutsch, and Ann Suter, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 13–35)" – via www.academia.edu.
^
"CDLI-Archival View" . cdli.ucla.edu .
^
"Tablet - CBS13856 | Collections - Penn Museum" . www.penn.museum .
^ Hirsch, Edward (April 4, 2017).
The Essential Poet's Glossary . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
ISBN
9780544932098 – via Google Books.
^ Jacobs, John (September 20, 2016). Suter, Ann; Dutsch, Dorota; Bachvarova, Mary R. (eds.).
The Fall of Cities in the Mediterranean: Commemoration in Literature, Folk-Song, and Liturgy . Cambridge University Press. pp. 13–35.
^ Boyadjian, Tamar M. (December 15, 2018).
The City Lament: Jerusalem across the Medieval Mediterranean . Cornell University Press.
ISBN
9781501730863 – via Google Books.
External links