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On the Ud-ŠU-BALA at Ur towards the end of the third millennium BC*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

James Kinnier Wilson
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Summary

The media coverage of the severe weather patterns of 1982–3 and 1997–8 has reasserted for the study of history the possible influence of abrupt climate change at transitional periods. Modern theories on the fall of Ur have already looked beyond the Elamite invasion to the evidence of food shortage and failing water supply as preconditions of the event. The present study seeks to enlarge upon this theme, and will suggest that, following a period of storm and flood, a sustained drought brought an unprecedented loss of life to the city of Ur and across Sumer. The paper will finally suggest a modern and scientific explanation of the ud-šu-bala, or “weather change”, of the period.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , Autumn 2005 , pp. 47 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2005

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Footnotes

*

The paper owes its inception and much guidance to my colleague, Richard Grove, Research Director at the Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex. It has been read in draft by Professors Sallaberger and Vanstiphout, to both of whom I am grateful for their comment and encouragement. For additional research material I am indebted to Martin Worthington of St John's College, Cambridge, and grateful acknowledgment is made also to the late Dr Jeremy Black of Oxford University for the extensive use made of the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), which lies behind translations offered in the paper. For their ever helpful assistance with regard to preparation and styling I thank the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre, University of Cambridge. To an extent it may not be necessary, but for the less accustomed or more general reader the abbreviations of edited Sumerian texts used in the composition are set down below:

Angim An-gim dím-ma (Sumerian title)

ELA Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta

LB I The Lugalbanda Epic I

LB II The Lugalbanda Epic II

LE The Eridu Lament

LSU Lamentation over Sumer and Ur

LU Lamentation over Ur

Lugal-e Lugal ud me-lám-bi ner-gál (Sumerian title)

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