Humanity's Oldest Poem Is a Cry of Grief

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Around 2,000 before the common era, in the city of Ur in southern Mesopotamia, scribes pressed cuneiform symbols into wet clay. The tablets they made became the oldest long-form [music] poetry humanity has. You would think the first thing humans wrote down would be a love song, [music] or a creation myth, or a recipe. It wasn't. The oldest surviving poem is called [music] The Lament for Ur. The city has fallen, the gods have left. Mothers crouch in burning streets.

[00:00:24]A goddess named Ningal sits in the ashes and lists every door of every house that is empty now. She doesn't pray for [music] renewal. She doesn't promise to rebuild. She just keeps listing what is gone. Humanity, the first time we wrote [music] anything for the future, wrote sadness without a fix, without a tomorrow. This Saturday, why a fourth-century monk would call that medicine. Stay close.