Uprooted people are a general problem in the history of civilization. But we need to distinguish between different types of population mixing. There are three different categories: immigrants, who come from elsewhere of their own free will, hoping for a better life where they arrive; exiles or refugees, who have had to leave their country because of the problems they encountered there; and finally, deportees, whose case differs from the previous one in that they were uprooted from their country of origin by the reigning power in their host country. But we can see the limits of these categories: slaves bought abroad are not, strictly speaking, deportees.
A numerically significant group in17th-century Babylonia were refugees from the Sumerian South; by this I mean the inhabitants of southern Sumer who had to leave their city in Samsu-iluna years 10 to 12, under conditions studied last year. Some of them are well documented, starting with the descendants of the Uruk inhabitants who took refuge in Kiš. Indeed, in texts from this city dating from Ammi-ditana, Ammi-ṣaduqa and Samsu-ditana, we find individuals devoted to the worship of deities typical of the Uruk pantheon, namely Ištar-d'Uruk(aka Urkitum), Nanaya and Kanisurra ; some bore characteristic titles such as purifiers-išippum and others a theophore onomastic of Urkitum, Nanaya or another Urukean deity, Uṣur-awassu. Lastly, we find names like Uruk-liblut "May the city of Uruk (re)live!" or Eanna-libluṭ "May the temple of Eanna (re)live!", which testify to the nostalgia of exiles for their hometown and the temple their ancestors served.
