Eridu

Eridu (Sumerian: 𒉣𒆠, NUN.KI/eridugki; Akkadian: irîtu; modern Arabic: Tell Abu Shahrain) is an archaeological site in southern Mesopotamia (modern Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq). Eridu was long considered the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia.[1] Located 12 km southwest of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew around temples, almost in sight of one another. These buildings were made of mud brick and built on top of one another.[2] With the temples growing upward and the village growing outward, a larger city was built.[2] 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. His temple was called E-Abzu, as Enki was believed to live in Abzu, an aquifer from which all life was believed to stem.

For the unincorporated community in Taylor County, Florida, see Eridu, Florida.
Not to be confused with Irridu.
Eridu
The ruins of Eridu.
Shown within Iraq
LocationTell Abu Shahrain, Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq
RegionMesopotamia
Coordinates30°48′57″N 45°59′46″E
TypeSettlement
AreaAt most 10 ha (25 acres)
History
FoundedApproximately 5400 BC
AbandonedApproximately 600 BC
Site notes
Official nameTell Eridu Archaeological Site
Part ofAhwar of Southern Iraq
CriteriaMixed: (iii)(v)(ix)(x)
Reference1481-007
Inscription2016 (40th session)
Area33 ha (0.13 sq mi)
Buffer zone1,069 ha (4.13 sq mi)
Coordinates30°49′1″N 45°59′45″E

History of research
E-abzu temple of Eridu

The site at Tel Abu Shahrain, near Basra, has been excavated four times. It was initially excavated by John George Taylor in 1855, R. Campbell Thompson in 1918, and H.R. Hall in 1919.[3][4][5][6] Excavation there resumed from 1946 to 1949 under Fuad Safar and Seton Lloyd of the Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities and Heritage.[7][8] These archaeological investigations showed that, according to A. Leo Oppenheim, "eventually the entire south lapsed into stagnation, abandoning the political initiative to the rulers of the northern cities", probably as a result of increasing salinity produced by continuous irrigation, and the city was abandoned in 600 BC.[9]

Myth and Legend
Re-creation of the port at Eridu.

In the Sumerian King List, Eridu is named as the city of the first kings. The opening line reads,

"[nam]-lugal an-ta èd-dè-a-ba
[eri]duki nam-lugal-la"

When kingship from heaven was lowered,
the kingship was in Eridu

In Sumerian mythology, it was said to be one of the five cities built before the Deluge occurred. Eridu, also transliterated as Eridug,[10] could mean "mighty place" or "guidance place". The king list continues:

In Eridu, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28800 years. Alalngar ruled for 36000 years. 2 kings; they ruled for 64800 years. Then Eridu fell and the kingship was taken to Bad-tibira.

The king list gave particularly long reigns to the kings who ruled before a great flood occurred and shows how the centre of power progressively moved from the south to the north of the country. Adapa, a man of Eridu, is depicted as an early culture hero. Identified with U-an, a half-human creature from the sea (Abgallu, from ab=water, gal=big, lu=man, he was considered to have brought civilization to the city during the time 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. Like all the Sumerian and Babylonian gods, Enki/Ea began as a local god who, according to the later cosmology, came to share the rule of the cosmos with Anu and Enlil. His kingdom was the sweet waters that lay below earth (Sumerian ab=water; zu=far).

The stories of Inanna, goddess of Uruk, describe how she had to go to Eridu in order to receive the gifts of civilization. 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. This seems to be a mythical reference to the transfer of power northward.

Babylonian texts talk of the foundation of Eridu by the god Marduk as the first city, "the holy city, the dwelling of their [the other gods] delight".

In the court of Assyria, special physicians trained in the ancient lore of Eridu, far to the south, foretold the course of sickness from signs and portents on the patient's body and offered the appropriate incantations and magical resources as cures.

History
Fired clay brick stamped with the name of Amar-Sin, Ur III, from Eridu, currently housed in the British Museum

Eridu appears to be the earliest settlement in the region, founded c. 5400 BC, close to the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Euphrates River. Because of accumulation of silt at the shoreline over the millennia, the remains of Eridu are now some distance from the gulf at Abu Shahrain in Iraq. Excavation has shown that the city was founded on a virgin sand-dune site with no previous occupation. Piotr Steinkeller has hypothesised that the earliest divinity at Eridu was a Goddess, who later emerged as the Earth Goddess Ninhursag (Nin = Lady, Hur = Mountain, Sag = Sacred), 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.[11]

According to Gwendolyn Leick,[12] Eridu was formed at the confluence of three separate ecosystems, supporting three distinct lifestyles, that came to an agreement about access to fresh water in a desert environment. The oldest agrarian settlement seems to have been based upon intensive subsistence irrigation agriculture derived from the Samarra culture to the north, characterised by the building of canals, and mud-brick buildings. The fisher-hunter cultures of the Arabian littoral were responsible for the extensive middens along the Arabian shoreline, and may have been the original Sumerians. They seem to have dwelt in reed huts. 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. All three cultures seem implicated in the earliest levels of the city. The urban settlement was centered on a large temple complex built of mudbrick, within a small depression that allowed water to accumulate.

Kate Fielden reports "The earliest village settlement (c. 5000 BC) had grown into a substantial city of mudbrick and reed houses by c. 2900 BC, covering 8–10 ha (20–25 acres)". Mallowan writes that by the Ubaid period, it was as an "unusually large city" of an area of approx. 20–25 acres, with a population of "not less than 4000 souls".[13] Jacobsen describes that "Eridu was for all practical purposes abandoned after the Ubaid period",[14] although it had recovered by Early Dynastic II as there was a Massive Early Dynastic II palace (100 m in each direction) partially excavated there.[15] Ruth Whitehouse called it "a Major Early Dynastic City".[16] By c. 2050 BC the city had declined; there is little evidence of occupation after that date. Eighteen superimposed mudbrick temples at the site underlie the unfinished Ziggurat of Amar-Sin (c. 2047–2039 BC). The finding of extensive deposits of fishbones associated with the earliest levels also shows a continuity of the Abzu cult associated later with Enki and Ea.

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.

Architecture
Large buildings, implying centralized government, started to be made. Eridu Temple, final Ubaid.

The urban nucleus of Eridu was Enki's temple, called House of the Aquifer (Cuneiform: 𒂍𒍪 𒀊, E2.ZU.AB; Sumerian: e2-abzu; Akkadian: bītu apsû), which in later history was called House of the Waters (Cuneiform: 𒂍𒇉, E2.LAGAB×HAL; Sumerian: e2-engur; Akkadian: bītu engurru). The name refers to Enki's realm.[17] His consort Ninhursanga had a nearby temple at Ubaid.[18]

During the Ur III period a ziggurat was built over the remains of previous temples by Ur-Nammu.

Aside from Enmerkar of Uruk (as mentioned in the Aratta epics), several later historical Sumerian kings are said in inscriptions found here to have worked on or renewed the e-abzu temple, including Elili of Ur; Ur-Nammu, Shulgi and Amar-Sin of Ur-III, and Nur-Adad of Larsa.[19]

House of the Aquifer (E-Abzu)
LevelDate (BC)PeriodSize (m)Note
XVIII5300-3×0.3Sleeper walls
XVII5300–5000-2.8×2.8First cella
XVI5300–4500Early Ubaid3.5×3.5
XV5000–4500Early Ubaid7.3×8.4
XIV5000–4500Early Ubaid-No structure found
XIII5000–4500Early Ubaid-No structure found
XII5000–4500Early Ubaid-No structure found
XI4500–4000Ubaid4.5×12.6First platform
X4500–4000Ubaid5×13
IX4500–4000Ubaid4×10
VIII4500–4000Ubaid18×11
VII4000–3800Ubaid17×12
VI4000–3800Ubaid22×9
V3800–3500Early Uruk-Only platform remains
IV3800–3500Early Uruk-Only platform remains
III3800–3500Early Uruk-Only platform remains
II3500–3200Early Uruk-Only platform remains
I3200Early Uruk-Only platform remains

Relative chronology
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See also
  • Abzu
  • Cities of the Ancient Near East

References
  1. Leick, Gwendolyn (2002), "Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City" (Penguin). Google Books.
  2. Pollard, Elizabeth (2015). Worlds Together, Worlds Apart concise edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. p. 51. ISBN 9780393250930.
  3. Taylor, JE (1855), "Notes on Abu Shahrein and Tell el Lahm", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 15, pp. 404–15
  4. Campbell Thompson, R (1920), "The British Museum excavations at Abu Shahrain in Mesopotamia in 1918", Archaeologia, 70, pp. 101–44
  5. Hall, HR (1925), "The Excavations of 1919 at Ur, el-'Obeid, and Eridu, and the History of Early Babylonia", Man, 25, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, pp. 1–7
  6. Hall, HR (1923), "Ur and Eridu: The British Museum Excavations of 1919", Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 9, pp. 177–95
  7. Lloyd, Seton; Shahrein, Abu (1974), "A Memorandum", Iraq, 36, pp. 129–38
  8. Safar, Fuad; Mustafa, MA; Lloyd, Seton (1981), Eridu, Iraq: Ministry of Culture and Information, State Organization of Antiquites and Heritage
  9. A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964, revised in 1977
  10. The Sumerian King List. Accessed 15 Dec 2010.
  11. Steinkeller, P., "On Rulers, Priests, and Sacred Marriage: Tracing the Evolution of Early Sumerian Kingship. In Priests and Officials in the Ancient Near East." Papers of the Second Colloquium on the Ancient Near East—The City and its Life held at the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan (Mitaka, Tokyo), ed. K. Watanabe, pp. 103–137. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1999
  12. Leick, Gwendolyn (2001), Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City (Allen Lane)
  13. Mallowan, Max (1970), "The Development of Cities from Al-U'baid to the end of Uruk 5" (Cambridge Ancient History)
  14. Modelski, "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-05-19. Retrieved 2008-07-17.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) accessed 17/12/2013
  15. Adams, Robert McCormick (1966), The Evolution of Urban Society, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)
  16. Whitehouse, Ruth (1977),The First Cities, (Oxford: Phaidon)
  17. Green (1975), pages 180–182
  18. P. Delougaz, A Short Investigation of the Temple at Al-'Ubaid, Iraq, vol. 5, pp. 1-11, 1938
  19. AR George, House most high: the temples of ancient Mesopotamia, p. 65, Eisenbrauns, ISBN 0-931464-80-3
  20. Liverani, Mario (2013). The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. Routledge. p. 13, Table 1.1 "Chronology of the Ancient Near East". ISBN 9781134750917.
  21. Shukurov, Anvar; Sarson, Graeme R.; Gangal, Kavita (7 May 2014). "The Near-Eastern Roots of the Neolithic in South Asia". PLOS ONE. 9 (5): e95714. Bibcode:2014PLoSO...995714G. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0095714. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 4012948. PMID 24806472.
  22. Bar-Yosef, Ofer; Arpin, Trina; Pan, Yan; Cohen, David; Goldberg, Paul; Zhang, Chi; Wu, Xiaohong (29 June 2012). "Early Pottery at 20,000 Years Ago in Xianrendong Cave, China". Science. 336 (6089): 1696–1700. Bibcode:2012Sci...336.1696W. doi:10.1126/science.1218643. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 22745428.
  23. Thorpe, I. J. (2003). The Origins of Agriculture in Europe. Routledge. p. 14. ISBN 9781134620104.
  24. Price, T. Douglas (2000). Europe's First Farmers. Cambridge University Press. p. 3. ISBN 9780521665728.
  25. Jr, William H. Stiebing; Helft, Susan N. (2017). Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture. Routledge. p. 25. ISBN 9781134880836.

Sources
  • Green, Margaret Whitney (1975). Eridu in Sumerian Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago.
  • Leick, Gwendolyn (2001). Mesopotamia: The invention of the city. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9198-4.
  • Seton Lloyd, Ur-al 'Ubaid, 'Uqair and Eridu. An Interpretation of Some Evidence from the Flood-Pit, Iraq, British Institute for the Study of Iraq, vol. 22, Ur in Retrospect. In Memory of Sir C. Leonard Woolley, pp. 23–31, (Spring - Autumn, 1960)
  • Oates, Joan, "Ur and Eridu: the Prehistory", Iraq, 22
  • Oates, Joan (1960), Ur in Retrospect: In Memory of Sir C. Leonard Woolley, pp. 32–50
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