Around 2004 BCE (middle chronology; some reckonings give c. 1940 BCE) an Elamite army led by Kindattu of the Shimashki dynasty, together with highland groups from the Zagros, took Ur, ending the Third Dynasty of Ur, whose territory had already been reduced to the city itself by Amorite incursions, famine and the defection of provinces to rulers such as Ishbi-Erra of Isin. The last king, Ibbi-Sin, was led into captivity in Elam and died there at an unknown date, and an Elamite garrison held Ur until Ishbi-Erra expelled it some years later. The fullest description of the sack is literary: the Lament for Urim and the Lament for Sumer and Urim, written in the following decades, depict famine during the siege, corpses in the gates and the Euphrates, the destruction of houses and the temple of Nanna, and the carrying-off and scattering of the people, attributing all of it to a decision of the gods. These texts were composed in part to legitimise the succeeding Isin dynasty and use conventional imagery, so they establish the fact and general character of the destruction but not its scale.
Forces of Elam under Kindattu of the Shimashki dynasty, with Zagros highland allies, took Ur, carried its last king Ibbi-Sin captive to Elam and garrisoned the city until Ishbi-Erra of Isin drove them out
Ur III administrative archives record labour gangs, rations and livestock rather than residents, and by the last years of Ibbi-Sin's reign the state had shrunk to the city of Ur itself amid famine and refugee movement, so neither the city's population at the moment of the sack nor the number carried off can be reconstructed.
No death toll can be given. The city laments speak of the people of Ur being killed, of corpses piled in the gates and of famine during the siege, but they are poetic compositions without figures, and no administrative or archaeological count exists.
Famine within the besieged city, the destruction of houses and of Nanna's shrine, and the killing of the inhabitants are described in the Lament for Urim and the Lament for Sumer and Urim as edited and translated by the Oxford ETCSL; these are literary-theological texts, not eyewitness records.
Iraq, Iran