Eridu

Eridu appears in the Sumerian King List as the first city, where kingship descended from heaven, and excavation has borne out something of that claim: beneath the ziggurat mound archaeologists found a sequence of eighteen temples built one above another, the earliest a single small room from around 5000 BC, each rebuilt on the ruins of the last over some two thousand years, which is among the clearest demonstrations anywhere of how a sacred site accumulates. The god was Enki, lord of fresh water. Kassite and Neo-Babylonian kings still built here, but the city was abandoned around 600 BC and the desert took it. Today it is a mound with the ziggurat platform, temple foundations and cemetery areas, standing in flat sand with nothing else in sight, and it forms part of the Ahwar World Heritage property.

History

Eridu was founded around 5400 BC, in the early Ubaid period, on a virgin sand dune then close to the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Euphrates and now about 90 miles inland, and the Sumerian King List counts it as the first city; its god was Enki, held to be its founder, whose temple was the E-Abzu. Eighteen mud-brick temples were built one over another here, beneath the unfinished ziggurat of Amar-Sin of about 2047-2039 BC, and in the Early Dynastic period a palace 100 metres square was put up. Ur III kings, Kassite rulers and Nebuchadnezzar II all built here, but the south slid into stagnation, probably as irrigation salted the soil, and the city was abandoned around 600 BC. John George Taylor, the British vice-consul at Basra, first dug here in 1855 and found inscribed bricks that identified the site, and R. Campbell Thompson and H. R. Hall excavated in 1918 and 1919, Hall finding a lump of cobalt-blue glass now dated to the 21st century BC or earlier (Wikipedia, Eridu).

The main sights

• The ziggurat platform - the mudbrick mass at the centre of the mound.
• Stacked temple foundations - the excavated sequence of successive shrines.
• The desert setting - flat sand with no other feature in any direction.
• Cemetery areas - the excavated burial ground beside the settlement.

When to go

November to March only; summer heat here is dangerous and there is no shade or water. Early morning is best. Sandstorms in spring can close the approach.

Before you go

The site is remote, unsigned and unfenced, and reaching it needs a four-wheel drive and a driver who knows the way. There is nothing built for visitors. Everything is eroded mudbrick. Permission arrangements should be made in advance.

Nearby

Ur lies northeast; Nasiriyah is beyond it.

Key facts