The question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" has been asked for millennia, probably since before writing was invented, but at least since circa 1700 BCE when the Sumerian (and later Babylonian) poem, Ludlul-Bel-Nemeqi (also known as The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer) was written and, later, the book of Job, dated to the 7th, 6th, or 4th centuries BCE.

These works deal with individual suffering, but a genre of literature emerged in Mesopotamia circa 2000 BCE dealing with the suffering of multitudes when their city fell, and, as far as they could tell, the only reason for its destruction was the will of the gods. These pieces are known as city laments, and the genre may have been quite popular, even though only a small number of the works have survived. Among the most complete are:

There is also the famous work, The Curse of Agade, which, though thematically linked to the genre of city laments, has more in common with Mesopotamian naru literature (basically, historical fiction). A work of Mesopotamian naru literature features a known historical figure in a fictional narrative; a city lament relates an actual historical event – the fall of a city and the attendant suffering – and provides a reason for it.

The works now known as city laments all share a common theme and focus but may differ in detail, as noted by scholar Jeremy Black:

Although formally heterogeneous, share some fundamental themes: destruction as a result of divine decision, abandonment of the city by the tutelary god, restoration, and return of the tutelary god. City laments may vary widely in the emphasis given to these themes.

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The "tutelary god" is the patron deity of a city. Every city in ancient Mesopotamia had its own patron deity and, when a given city fell upon hard times (when the crops failed, for example), it could be interpreted as a sign that the patron deity was displeased with the people – or it could mean that god or goddess had abandoned the city and it was now left defenseless.

The city in ancient Mesopotamia was considered a refuge, a sanctuary, protected by a powerful supernatural entity, and it gave its citizens a sense of identity and purpose, as scholar Gwendolyn Leick explains:

Mesopotamian scribes considered urban life as the only form of civilized communality. A person's civic identity was that of a citizen of a particular city with its suburbs and surrounding countryside. Nonurban members of the population defined themselves by their tribal allegiance.

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To lose one's city was to lose that sense of "civic identity" and, having no tribal allegiance outside of one's city, to be left at the mercy of the elements and any number of threats and dangers. The fall of the city, therefore, was not just the loss of one's home and livelihood, but in a real sense the loss of self – of all semblances of identity, sense of safety, purpose, and confidence in any kind of future. The city lament expressed this sense of complete loss through details of the city's fall.

A common trope in the city lament is the return of the tutelary god after the devastation, giving the tale a happy ending, but that never seems to make up for the suffering of the people during the time the deity had left the city.

The best example of the city lament, and the most famous, is the Lament for Sumer and Ur, which deals with the fall of Ur in 2004 BCE. Invading forces from the east toppled Ur – alternately cited as those from Elam, the Gutians, and the Amorites – seemingly all three at different times, finally leading to the destruction of the city and the deaths of its citizens.

The reason given in the poem for this suffering is that the gods Anu (An), Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag (all powerful deities) have decided to "overturn the divine powers of Sumer" and "to destroy the city" for reasons known only to them. In the following excerpt from the Lament for Sumer and Ur, "Nintud" is another name for Ninhursag, Nanna is the Sumerian god of the full moon and wisdom, Utu is Utu-Shamash, the sun god, and Ibbi-Suen is Ibbi-Sin, the last king of Ur.

The full poem (given below in the bibliography) is 519 lines long; only the first 103 are given here, taken from The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (as are the other two laments for Ur and Eridu). Some spellings have been changed for clarity, and parenthetical comments/line variants have been omitted.

1 to 2: To overturn the appointed times, to obliterate the divine plans, the storms gather to strike like a flood.

3 to 11: An, Enlil, Enki and Ninhursag have decided its fate – to overturn the divine powers of Sumer, to lock up the favorable reign in its home, to destroy the city, to destroy the house, to destroy the cattle-pen, to level the sheepfold; that the cattle should not stand in the pen, that the sheep should not multiply in the fold, that watercourses should carry brackish water, that weeds should grow in the fertile fields, that mourning plants should grow in the open country,

12 to 21: that the mother should not seek out her child, that the father should not say "O my dear wife!", that the junior wife should take no joy in his embrace, that the young child should not grow vigorous on his knee, that the wet-nurse should not sing lullabies; to change the location of kingship, to defile the seeking of oracles, to take kingship away from the Land, to cast the eye of the storm on all the land, to obliterate the divine plans by the order of An and Enlil;

22 to 26: after An had frowned upon all the lands, after Enlil had looked favorably on an enemy land, after Nintud had scattered the creatures that she had created, after Enki had altered the course of the Tigris and Euphrates, after Utu had cast his curse on the roads and highways;

27 to 37: so as to obliterate the divine powers of Sumer, to change its preordained plans, to alienate the divine powers of the reign of kingship of Ur, to humiliate the princely son in his house E-kic-nu-jal, to break up the unity of the people of Nanna, numerous as ewes; to change the food offerings of Ur, the shrine of magnificent food offerings; that its people should no longer dwell in their quarters, that they should be given over to live in an inimical place; that Cimacki and Elam, the enemy, should dwell in their place; that its shepherd, in his own palace, should be captured by the enemy, that Ibbi-Suen should be taken to the land Elam in fetters, that from Mount Zabu on the edge of the sea to the borders of Ancan, like a swallow that has flown from its house, he should never return to his city;

38 to 46: that on the two banks of the Tigris and of the Euphrates bad weeds should grow, that no one should set out on the road, that no one should seek out the highway, that the city and its settled surroundings should be razed to ruin-mounds; that its numerous black-headed people should be slaughtered; that the hoe should not attack the fertile fields, that seed should not be planted in the ground, that the melody of the cowherds' songs should not resound in the open country, that butter and cheese should not be made in the cattle-pen, that dung should not be stacked on the ground, that the shepherd should not enclose the sacred sheepfold with a fence, that the song of the churning should not resound in the sheepfold;

47 to 55: to decimate the animals of the open country, to finish off all living things, that the four-legged creatures of Cakkan should lay no more dung on the ground, that the marshes should be so dry as to be full of cracks and have no new seed, that sickly-headed reeds should grow in the reed-beds, that they should be covered by a stinking morass, that there should be no new growth in the orchards, that it should all collapse by itself – so as quickly to subdue Ur like a roped ox, to bow its neck to the ground: the great charging wild bull, confident in its own strength, the primeval city of lordship and kingship, built on sacred ground.

56 to 57: Its fate cannot be changed. Who can overturn it? It is the command of An and Enlil. Who can oppose it?

58 to 68: An frightened the very dwellings of Sumer, the people were afraid. Enlil blew an evil storm; silence lay upon the city. Nintud bolted the door of the storehouses of the Land. Enki blocked the water in the Tigris and the Euphrates. Utu took away the pronouncement of equity and justice. Inanna handed over victory in strife and battle to a rebellious land. Ninjirsu poured Sumer away like milk to the dogs. Turmoil descended upon the Land, something that no one had ever known, something unseen, which had no name, something that could not be fathomed. The lands were confused in their fear. The god of the city turned away; its shepherd vanished.

69 to 78: The people, in their fear, breathed only with difficulty. The storm immobilized them; the storm did not let them return. There was no return for them, the time of captivity did not pass. What did Enlil, the shepherd of the black-headed people, do? Enlil, to destroy the loyal households, to decimate the loyal men, to put the evil eye on the sons of the loyal men, on the first-born, Enlil then sent down Gutium from the mountains. Their advance was as the flood of Enlil that cannot be withstood. The great wind of the countryside filled the countryside, it advanced before them. The extensive countryside was destroyed, no one moved about there.

79 to 92: The dark time was roasted by hailstones and flames. The bright time was wiped out by a shadow. On that day, heaven rumbled, the earth trembled, the storm worked without respite. Heaven was darkened, it was covered by a shadow; the mountains roared. Utu lay down at the horizon, dust passed over the mountains. Nanna lay at the zenith; the people were afraid. The city ...... stepped outside. The foreigners in the city even chased away its dead. Large trees were uprooted, the forest growth was ripped out. The orchards were stripped of their fruit, they were cleaned of their offshoots. The crop drowned while it was still on the stalk, the yield of the grain diminished.
3 lines fragmentary

93 to 103: They piled ...... up in heaps, they spread ...... out like sheaves. There were corpses floating in the Euphrates, brigands roamed the roads. The father turned away from his wife without saying "O my wife!" The mother turned away from her child without saying "O my child!" He who had a productive estate neglected his estate without saying "O my estate!" The rich man took an unfamiliar path away from his possessions. In those days the kingship of the Land was defiled. The tiara and crown that had been on the king's head were both spoiled. The lands that had followed the same path were split into disunity. The food offerings of Ur, the shrine of magnificent food offerings, were changed for the worse. Nanna traded away his people, numerous as ewes…

The Lament for Sumer and Ur follows the same paradigm as the other city laments, but it does not use rhythm and line repetition in the same way. For example, the Lament for Ur begins:

He has abandoned his cow-pen and let the breezes haunt his sheepfold. The wild bull has abandoned his cow-pen and has let the breezes haunt his sheepfold. The lord of all the lands has abandoned it and has let the breezes haunt his sheepfold. Enlil has abandoned the shrine Nibru and has let the breezes haunt his sheepfold…

(lines 1 to 5)

Similarly, the Lament for Eridu begins:

The roaring storm covered it like a cloak, was spread over it like a sheet. It covered Eridu like a cloak, was spread over it like a sheet. In the city, the furious storm resounded. In Eridu, the furious storm sounded. Its voice was smothered with silence as by a gale. Its people…Eridu was smothered with silence as by a gale…

(lines 1 to 5)

The Lament for Sumer and Ur certainly does have a distinct rhythm and repetition ("that weeds should grow in the fertile fields, that mourning plants should grow in the open country, that the mother should not seek out her child…" lines, 11 to 12), but the repetition in the Lament for Ur and Lament for Eridu is more obvious and lends to these works a more direct feeling of inevitability and immediacy.

Repetition in city laments, as in Sumerian literature and Mesopotamian literature generally, was used for an entirely practical purpose: to help scribes remember the compositions. In the city laments, however, this repetition also serves to mirror the event it describes in that what has happened before could happen again. As Black notes:

The poem uses these events as an opportunity to convey what could be taken as its main message: the fickleness of fortune, the inherent mortality of all things.

(128)

The city laments can be read as a kind of expansion on the Sumerian King List (abbreviated as SKL). The SKL has the repetition of lines like, "Then Eridu fell and the kingship was taken to Bad-tibira…Then Bad-tibira fell and the kingship was taken to Larak" – it says what happened, but not why. The city laments provided the why.

Mesopotamian city laments influenced later works, notably biblical narratives, and especially the biblical book of Lamentations, which deals with the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The book of Lamentations, in fact, follows the model of the Mesopotamian city lament but departs in some significant ways. A city lament is written in the voice of the city's tutelary deity, Lamentations is not; a city lament mourns the fall of the city, Lamentations does not; a city lament includes the restoration of the city, Lamentations does not.

The later work and the city laments serve the same basic purpose, however: to explain suffering on a grand scale. When everything has been lost, and one can see no reason for what has happened, one has to make sense of the event through some form of cause and effect. The "effect" was already known – the fall of the city – and the city laments provided the cause: the will of the gods.