There were also important nonhousehold activities that were considered womanly and attributed to goddesses. Many of these grow out of the actions of women in their role as mothers, but extend beyond the household by being performed in public, for people who may not be related to the performer. Chief of these was the singing of laments.
Goddesses sing laments over their dead sons, lovers and brothers.
The ancient literary catalogues from ancient Sumer list many laments that the goddess Geshtinanna sang over her brother Dumuzi, who had died and gone to the Netherworld, as well as laments that Inanna chanted for this same Dumuzi, who had been her spouse. These songs have not yet been recovered by archaeologists, but we do have a lament that Inanna sang over the King Ur-Nammu, who she identified with Dumuzi. Sons, too, were mourned, and laments by several goddesses for their dead sons are known. The role of goddesses as mourner extends beyond the family, for the goddesses were the chief singers of public laments in the Sumerian literary tradition, the prime mourners over their destroyed cities. Several literary compositions commemorate historical disasters.