2004 BC
Fall of Ur (Sack of Ur, end of Ur III)
The setting
Ur (Tell el-Muqayyar), southern Mesopotamia, Iraq
Walled city on the alluvial plain of the lower Euphrates; siege against fortifications, no open-field engagement recorded.
Reveal the outcome
Recorded sideElam and Shimashki under Kindattu
Recorded resultvictory
The city was taken and sacked; Ibbi-Sin was deported to Elam; the last Sumerian territorial state ended.
How the atlas explains it
The state was already failing before the siege: grain prices in Ibbi-Sin's date-formulas and letters show famine, and the provinces had stopped answering. Kindattu took a capital that could no longer feed or reinforce itself. The military event finished a collapse the administration had begun.
What followed
End of the Ur III dynasty and of Sumerian political power. Its aftermath literature - the city laments - is the earliest surviving written record of conquest trauma.