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The disastrous twenty-first century B.c.E. began with the tragic and untimely death of Ur-Nammu, in 2096 B.c.£. It culminated with an unparalleled calamity, by the hand of the gods themselves, in 2024 B.c.E. The interval was seventy- two years—exactly the precessional shift of one degree; and if it was just a coincidence, then it was one of a series of “coincidental” occurrences that were somehow well coordi- nated... Following Ur-Nammu’s tragic death, the throne of Ur was taken over by his son Shulgi. Unable to claim the status of a demigod, he asserted (in his inscriptions) that he was never- theless born under divine auspices: the god Nannar himself arranged for the child to be conceived in Enlil’s temple in Nippur through a union between Ur-Nammu and Enlil’s high priestess, so that “a ‘little Enlil’ a child suitable for kingship and throne, shall be conceived.” That was a genealogical claim not to be sneezed at. Ur Nammu himself, as earlier stated, was “two-thirds” divine, since his mother was a goddess. Though the High Priestess who was Shulgi’s mother is not named, her very status sug- gests that she, too, was of some godly lineage, for it was a king’s daughter who was chosen to be an EN.TU; and the kings of Ur, starting with the first dynasty, could be traced back to demigods. That Nannar himself arranged for the union to take place in Enlil’s temple in Nippur was also significant; as previously stated, it was under Ur-Nammu’s reign that for the first time the priesthood of Nippur was combined with the priesthood of another city—in this case, with the one in Ur. COUNTDOWN TO DOOMSDAY