Eridu

Location and Name

Eridu (Sumerian 𒂍𒋀𒆠, Eridug; Akkadian Eridu) is a city-state at the far south of Mesopotâmia, in the marshy zone near the ancient mouth of the Euphrates, approximately 12 km southwest of Ur. The modern site is Tell Abu Shahrain, in Iraq (Dhi Qar Governorate).

The name is frequently glossed as “good house” or “distant house”, depending on the etymological reconstruction adopted.

The First City

The Sumerian King List, a canonical text of ancient Mesopotamian historiography, opens with the formula:

“When kingship descended from heaven, kingship was in Eridu.”

For the Sumerians, Eridu was literally the oldest city in the world — preceding the Flood, preceding every subsequent human dynasty. Archaeologically, the sequence of superimposed temples at Eridu confirms continuous occupation since ~5400 BCE (Ubaid Period), reaching its apex between the fifth and fourth millennia. It is, in fact, one of the oldest known urban occupations, though today archaeologists debate whether it was truly “the first” — other candidates include Tell Brak (Syria) and Çatalhöyük (Anatolia).

The original environment was radically different from the present: a marshy zone, with freshwater lagoons fed by the Euphrates, reed vegetation, an abundance of fish and aquatic birds. The archetypal environment of the Abzu — the freshwater abyss that gives its name to the domain of Enki.

Tutelary Deity: Enki

Eridu is the city of Enki (Akkadian Ea), the god of wisdom, freshwater, magic, and craftsmanship. The bond is so complete that the principal temple of Eridu is called E-abzu (Sumerian: é-abzu, “house of the abyss”) — not dedicated to Enki, but literally the place where Enki dwells.

The archaeology of the E-abzu is particularly rich: seventeen successive temple levels, from the oldest (a reed hut, ~5400 BCE) to the latest (the monumental structure of the Ur III period, ~2000 BCE), allow one to trace the continuity of the cult of Enki/Ea across three thousand five hundred years.

Central Myths Set in Eridu

Eridu appears as the setting in several key myths:

• Enki and the creation of humanity — he moulds men from clay of the Abzu, in Eridu.
• Inanna and the me’s — Inanna travels to Eridu, intoxicates Enki, and carries away the me’s (the cosmic decrees of civilisation) to Uruk. When Enki awakens, he attempts to retrieve them along the way. He fails.
• Adapa — sage of Eridu who ascends to the heaven of An. Enki counsels him to refuse the bread and water of life — fatal counsel that costs humanity immortality.
• Atrahasis (Eridu version) — Enki, in Eridu, whispers to the reed wall to warn Atrahasis of the flood.

Each of these myths circumscribes the ambiguous character of Enki: craftsman, sage, counsellor — and also manipulator, withholder of knowledge, architect behind the wall.

Decline

Eridu declines relatively early in Mesopotamian history. Already in the third millennium BCE, it loses political centrality to Uruk and later to Ur. The progressive salinisation of the region, the shifting course of the Euphrates, and the advance of the desert definitively abandon it by the first millennium BCE. Yet its symbolic prestige persists: to invoke Eridu, even after its abandonment, was to invoke the primordial antiquity of civilisation.

Game Perspective

In Mensageiros do Vento, Eridu is, through the lens of the game, the symbolic capital of the Demiurge — the place where Enki, the Demiurge architect, designed the engineering of the prison-civilisation inherited ever since.

It was in Eridu that Enki:

• Moulded humanity from clay — the material origin of the human being and, simultaneously, the first act of the prison architecture (the human is forged by him, to his measure).
• Codified the me’s — cosmic decrees of civilisation: priestly offices, hierarchies, writing, laws, official religions. The entire form of the social prison.
• Orchestrated the operations of retention — Adapa refuses eternal life through Enki’s ill counsel; humans receive cities, yet with the Demiurge’s design embedded within them.

And it was from Eridu that Inanna stole the me’s — the first mythic rupture, the first act of the opposing faction. The me’s went to Uruk. Enki attempted to recover them. He failed. Sophia escaped through the very hands that had sculpted her.

For the mensageiros who access the Akashic Records, the akashic Eridu is dense and dangerous territory: inscribed there is the most ancient memory of the prison, but also the memory of the first escape. To walk through Eridu is to smell the scent of wet reed and hear the whisper behind the wall.

See Also

• Enki
• Demiurge
• Inanna
• Uruk
• Ur
• Nippur
• Anunnaki
• Akashic Records