Eridu

Eridu (present day Abu Shahrein, Iraq) is considered the oldest city in the world and, certainly, is among the most ancient of ruins. Founded in circa 5400 BCE, Eridu was thought to have been created by the gods and was home to the great water god Enki (who, later, would develop from a local god to merge with deities such as Anu and Enlil as Lord of the Universe, and was associated with Ea, god of wisdom). The Sumerian King List cites Eridu as the “city of the first kings”, stating, “After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridu” and the city was looked back upon by the variouis tribes and city-states of Mesopotamia as a metropolis of a 'golden age’ in the same way the writers of the Biblical narratives created a 'Garden of Eden’ as their mythical paradise from which humanity fell.

The city of Eridu features prominently in Sumerian mythology, not only as the first city and home of the gods, but as the locale to which the great goddess Innana traveled in order to receive the gifts of civilization which she then bestowed upon humanity from her home city of Uruk. The Eridu Genesis (composed circa 2300 BCE) is the earliest description of the Great Flood (which may have been the first written record of a long oral tradition of a time around 2800 BCE when the Euphrates rose high above her banks and flooded the region. Excavations at Ur in the 1920’s revealed an eight-foot layer of silt and clay, consistent with the sediment of the Euphrates, which seemed to support the claim of a catastrophic flood in the area around 2800 BCE. The event was clearly a local, not a global, event, however) and pre-dates the Biblical book of Genesis in the tale of the good man Utnapishtim (also known as Atrahasis or Ziusudra) who builds a great boat by the will of the gods and gathers inside 'the seed of life'. A proto-Genesis tale of the Garden has been found at Eridu in which Tagtug the Weaver (or gardener) is cursed by the great god Enki for eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree in the garden after being told not to. Eridu is further associated with the tale of the great sage Adapa, who was initiated into the meaning of life and all understanding by the god of wisdom, Ea, but was ultimately tricked by Ea and denied the one thing he most wanted: knowledge of life without death, to live forever.

The city was an important center for trade as well as religion and, at its height, was a great 'melting pot’ of cultures and diversity, as evidenced in the various forms of artistry found among the ruins. Eridu was abandoned intermittently over the years for reasons which remain unclear and, finally, left behind completely sometime around the year 600 BCE. The great Ziggurat of Amar-Sin in the center of the city has been associated with the Biblical Tower of Babel from The Book of Genesis and the city itself with the Biblical city of Babel. This association springs from archaeological discoveries (the claim that the Ziggurat of Amar-Sin more closely resembles the description of the Biblical Tower) and a reading of the Babylonian historian Berossus (c. 200 BCE) who seems to be clearly referring to Eridu when he writes of 'Babylon’. Today the ruins of Eridu are largely wind-swept sand dunes and little remains to remind a visitor of the once mighty city which was founded by the gods.

Written by Joshua J. Mark, published on 20 July 2010 under the following license: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms.