14 Facts About Eridu

Eridu was long considered the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia.

In Sumerian mythology, Eridu was originally the home of Enki, later known by the Akkadians as Ea, who was considered to have founded the city.

Eridu's temple was called E-Abzu, as Enki was believed to live in Abzu, an aquifer from which all life was believed to stem.

In 2019, excavations at Eridu were resumed by a joint Italian, French, and Iraqi effort.

In some, but not all, versions of the Sumerian King List, Eridu is the first of five cities where kingship was received before a flood came over the land.

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Eridu was considered to have brought civilization to the city as the sage of King Alulim.

In Sumerian mythology, Eridu was the home of the Abzu temple of the god Enki, the Sumerian counterpart of the Akkadian god Ea, god of deep waters, wisdom and magic.

At first Enki, the god of Eridu, attempted to retrieve these sources of his power but later willingly accepted that Uruk now was the centre of the land.

Unlike Ur or Akkad we don't have a good idea of how Eridu actually fell, or when other than in the Early Dynastic period.

Piotr Steinkeller has hypothesised that the earliest divinity at Eridu was a Goddess, who later emerged as the Earth Goddess Ninhursag, with the later growth in Enki as a male divinity the result of a hieros gamos, with a male divinity or functionary of the temple.

The third culture that contributed to the building of Eridu were the Semitic-speaking nomadic herders of herds of sheep and goats living in tents in semi-desert areas.

Jacobsen describes that "Eridu was for all practical purposes abandoned after the Ubaid period", although it had recovered by Early Dynastic II as there was a Massive Early Dynastic II palace partially excavated there.

Eridu was abandoned for long periods, before it was finally deserted and allowed to fall into ruin in the 6th century BC.

The encroachment of neighbouring sand dunes, and the rise of a saline water table, set early limits to its agricultural base so in its later Neo-Babylonian development, Eridu was rebuilt as a purely temple site, in honour of its earliest history.