An interlude in our story. Today, a poem of passionate despair. With the collapse of Sumerian civilization in 2000 BCE, five great laments were written that would continue to be performed and recorded until the end of Mesopotamian civilization some fifteen hundred years later, and may well have survived for a time after that. This episode will be the Lament for Ur, in its entirety, in translation, with as much of the ancient passion that would have infused it as I can manage. I do warn you that the first two verses are very repetitive, and there is an element of mournful repetition in the entire thing, but the very first verse is not representative of the whole thing, so feel free to fast forward a bit if it gets to be a bit too much. Verse 2 starts at time stamp 7:12.
The ETCSL Translation is available here: https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.2.2.2&charenc=j#
Oldest Stories 