Eridu: The City Where Kingship First Came From Heaven
The city where kingship first came down from heaven, according to the Sumerians, and where eighteen temples were built one on top of another.
Eridu, now Abu Shahrain in southern Iraq, was the city the Sumerians believed to be the oldest in the world and the home of Enki. Excavators found eighteen temples built one on top of another.
Eridu, now the mound of Abu Shahrain in southern Iraq, was the city the Sumerians believed to be the oldest in the world. The Sumerian King List opens: 'After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridu. In Eridu, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28,800 years.' It was the home of Enki and his temple, the E-abzu, built at the edge of marshes and fresh water.
Archaeology partly agrees with the legend. Excavations by Fuad Safar and Seton Lloyd in 1946 to 1949 found a sequence of temples built one on top of another, eighteen levels in all, from small shrines of around 5400 BCE up to a ziggurat of the Ur III kings around 2100 BCE. It is one of the longest continuous sacred sites known.
Some early levels contained deposits of fish bones, which many scholars link to offerings for Enki, lord of the waters. Eridu was also the home of the sage Adapa, and in myth it is where Inanna came to take the me from Enki. The site's position on the edge of the old marshes, where river water met the sea, fits its role as the home of the god of fresh water.
For ancient-astronaut writers, Eridu is the first base where the gods set up on Earth. For archaeologists, it is a rare case where a myth of origins sits on top of a site that really is extremely old. Its temple mound still rises from the desert today, far from the modern shoreline.
Archaeologists found eighteen temples stacked in the same spot at Eridu, rebuilt again and again for roughly three thousand years.
Archaeologists see Eridu as an early village that grew into a cult center, with no sign of any non-human builders, and note that other settlements in the region are as old or older.
