Eridu (; Sumerian: eridugki; Akkadian: irîtu) was a Sumerian city located at Tell Abu Shahrain (), also Abu Shahrein or Tell Abu Shahrayn, an archaeological site in Lower Mesopotamia. It is located in Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq, near the modern city of Basra. Eridu is traditionally considered the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia based on the Sumerian King List. Located south-southwest of the ancient site of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew around temples, almost in sight of one another. The city gods of Eridu were Enki and his consort Damkina. Enki, later known as Ea, 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 thought to stem. According to Sumerian temple hymns, another name for the temple of Ea/Enki was called Esira (Esirra).
One of the religious quarters of Babylon, containing the temple called the Esagila as well as the temple of Annunitum, among others, was also named Eridu.Gurney, O. R., "The Fifth Tablet of ‘The Topography of Babylon’", Iraq, vol. 36, no. 1/2, pp. 39–52, 1974
Archaeology Topography Eridu is located on a natural hill in a basin approximately long and deep, which is separated from the Euphrates River by a sandstone ridge called the Hazem. This basin, the As Sulaybiyat Depression (formerly: Khor en-Nejeif), becomes a seasonal lake (Arabic: Sebkha) during the rainy season from November to April. During this period, it is filled by the discharge of the Wadi Khanega. Adjacent to eastern edge of the seasonal lake are the Hammar Marshes.
In the 3rd Millennium BC a canal, Id-edin-Eriduga (NUN)ki "the canal of the Eridug plain", connected Eridu to the Euphrates River, which later shifted its course. The path of the canal is marked by several low tells with 2nd Millennium BC surface pottery and later burials. The site contains 8 mounds:
Mound 1 – Abū Šahrain, c. 18 hectares (c. 4.5 hectares within the perimeter of the temenos wall) in area NW to WE, in height, Enki Temple, Ur III Ziggurat () Sacred Area, Early Dynastic plano-convex bricks found, Ubaid Period cemetery (30°49’01.62” N, 45°59’46.57” E) Mound 2 – c. 7 hectares in area, in height, N of Abū Šahrain, Early Dynastic Palace, remnants of city wall built with plano-convex bricks Mound 3 – c. 0.2 hectares in area, high, SSW of Abū Šahrain, Isin-Larsa pottery found Mound 4 – c. 10 hectares in area, SW of Abū Šahrain, Kassite pottery found Mound 5 – c. 25 hectares in area, high, SE of Abū Šahrain, Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods Mound 6 – in area, high, SW of Abū Šahrain Mound 7 – in area, high, E of Abū Šahrai Mound 8 – Usalla, flat area, NW of Abū Šahrain, Hajj Mohammed and later Ubaid
In the early 1990s a dyke was constructed around Mounds 1-5 in preparation for the area being used as a reservoir. This defines the "Eridu Archaeological Area".Quenet P, D’Agostino F, Rendu Loisel A-C, et al, Archaeological mission at Eridu: The 2022 campaign of the University of Strasbourg at Abu Shahrayn. Preliminary report Part 1: Off-site Studies and Site 1, the E-abzu monumental complex reconsidered", Iraq 87, pp. 263-312, 2025
History of exploration The site was initially excavated by John George Taylor, the British Vice-counsel at Basra, in 1855. Among the finds were inscribed bricks enabling the identification of the site as Eridu. Excavation on the main tell next occurred by R. Campbell Thompson from April 10 until May 8, 1918, and H. R. Hall from April 21 until May 8, 1919, who also conducted a survey in the area around the tell. An interesting find by Hall was a piece of manufactured blue glass which he dated to . The blue color was achieved with cobalt, long before this technique emerged in Egypt. This lump of glass is currently dated to the 21st century BC or even earlier, and is considered as perhaps the earliest such glass object in the world in the History of glass. It was produced during the Akkadian Empire or the early Ur III period.
Excavation there resumed from 1946 to 1949 under Fuad Safar and Seton Lloyd of the Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities and Heritage. Among the finds were a Ubaid period terracotta boat model, complete with a socket amidship for a mast and hole for stays and rudder, bevel-rimmed bowls, and a "lizard type" figurine like those found in a sounding under the Royal Cemetery of Ur. Soundings in the cemetery showed it to have about 1000 graves, all from the end of the Ubaid period (Temple levels VI and VII). In a deep sounding to virgin soil on the southwest slope of Mound 1 they found a sequence of 17 Ubaid Period superseding temples and an Ubaid Period graveyard with 1000 graves of mud-brick boxes oriented to the southeast. The temple began as a mud brick square with a niche. At Level XI it was rebuilt and eventually reached its final tripartite form in Level VI. In Ur III times a 300 square meter platform was constructed as a base for a ziggurat. 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. In 1990 the site was visited by A. M. T. Moore who found two areas of surface pottery kilns not noted by the earlier excavators.
In March 2006, Giovanni Pettinato and S. Chiod from Rome's La Sapienza University claimed to have discovered 500 Early Dynastic historical and literary cuneiform tablets on the surface at Eridu "disturbed by an explosion". The tablets were said to be from 2600 to 2100 BC (rulers Eannatum to Amar-Sin) and be part of a library. A team was sent to the site by Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage which found no tablets, only stamped bricks from Eridu and surrounding sites such as Ur. Nor was there a permit to excavate at the site issued to anyone.Curtis, John et al., "An Assessment of Archaeological Sites in June 2008: An Iraqi-British Project", Iraq, vol. 70, pp. 215–237, 2008 At this point Pettinato stated that they had actually found 70 inscribed bricks. This turned out to be stamped bricks used to build the modern Eridu dig-house. The dig-house had been built using bricks from the demolished Leonard Woolley's expedition house at Ur (clearly spelled out in the 1981 Iraqi excavation report to avoid confusion to future archaeologists).Pettinato, Giovanni, "Eridu Texts", Time and History in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 56th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Barcelona, July 26th–30th, 2010, edited by Lluis Feliu, J. Llop, A. Millet Albà and Joaquin Sanmartín, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, pp. 799–802, 2013 Most of the bricks in question were returned to Ur in 1962 for use in restoration efforts.
In October 2014, Franco D’Agostino visited the site in preparation for the coming resumption of excavation, noting a number of inscribed Amar-Sin brick fragments on the surface. In 2019, excavations at Eridu were resumed by a joint Italian, French, and Iraqi effort which included the University of Rome La Sapienza and the University of Strasbourg, directed by F. D’Agostino and P. Quenet. A short survey found that occupational activity, including burials, extended for a wide area around most of the mounds. Excavation occurred on the southwestern slope of Mound 1 (renamed Site 1) both at the upper slope and at the base. Work has included producing new detail topographic and photogrammetric maps and is mainly focused on the Ubaid period cemetery and its associated Ubaid residential area. Another excavation season lasting two months was conducted in 2022. Work continued on the southwestern slope of Mound 1 and a new area was opened on the Kassite portion of Mound 4. The work on Mound 1 determined that the temenos wall dated to the Ur III Empire and the associated glacis to the Isin-Larsa Period. Aerial photogrammetry was extended to Mound 2. Further magnetometry surveying was conducted on Mound 4.
Architecture Prehistoric Temple(s) The urban nucleus of Eridu was Enki's temple, called House of the Aquifer in the oldest Sumerian texts (Cuneiform: , ; Sumerian: ; Akkadian: ). In later texts the temple was called House of the Waters (Cuneiform: , ; Sumerian: e₂-engur; Akkadian: bītu engurru). The name refers to Enki's realm. His consort Ninhursag had a nearby temple at Ubaid.
The origin of this temple goes back to a pre-historic sequence of buildings excavated during the 1946 to 1949 campaigns. This sequence starts at level XI in the table below, in the middle Ubaid period. Eridu is universally represented in Sumerian sources, especially in the King Lists, as the "First City" (See below in section "Mythology"). The sequence of "Palace-like" or "Temple-Like" buildings just mentioned seems to substantiate this claim as it appears to be the first occurrence of such structures in the region
Level Date (BC) Period Size (m) Note XVIII 5300 – 3×0.3 Sleeper walls XVII 5300–5000 – 2.8×2.8 First cella XVI 5300–4500 Early Ubaid 3.5×3.5 XV 5000–4500 Early Ubaid 7.3×8.4 XIV 5000–4500 Early Ubaid – No structure found XIII 5000–4500 Early Ubaid – No structure found XII 5000–4500 Early Ubaid – No structure found XI 4500–4000 Ubaid 4.5×12.6 First platform X 4500–4000 Ubaid 5×13 IX 4500–4000 Ubaid 4×10 VIII 4500–4000 Ubaid 18×11 VII 4000–3800 Ubaid 17×12 VI 4000–3800 Ubaid 22×9 V 3800–3500 Early Uruk – Only platform remains IV 3800–3500 Early Uruk – Only platform remains III 3800–3500 Early Uruk – Only platform remains II 3500–3200 Early Uruk – Only platform remains I 3200 Early Uruk – Only platform remains
Ur III Ziggurat During the Ur III period, Ur-Nammu had a ziggurat built over the remains of previous temples. Aside from Enmerkar of Uruk (as mentioned in the Aratta epics), several later historical Sumerian kings are said in inscriptions found here to have ordered improvement or re-building works on the e-abzu temple, including Elili of Ur; Ur-Nammu, Shulgi and Amar-Sin of Ur-III, and Nur-Adad of Larsa.
History Chalcolithic Age Ubaid period Eridu is one of the earliest settlements in the region, founded during the early Ubaid period, at that time close to the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Euphrates, although in modern times it is about 90 miles inland. Excavation has shown that the city was founded on a virgin sand dune site with no previous habitation. Eighteen superimposed mudbrick temples at the site (see above, section "Architecture") underlie the unfinished ziggurat of Amar-Sin (c. 2047–2039 BC). Levels XIX to VI were from the Ubaid period and Levels V to I were dated to the Uruk period.Quenet, Philippe, "Eridu: Note on the Decoration of the Uruk ‘Temples.’", Proceedings of the 11th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East: Vol. 2: Field Reports. Islamic Archaeology, edited by Adelheid Otto et al., 1st ed., Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 341–48, 2020
During the Ubaid period the site extended out to an area of about 12 hectares (about 30 acres). Twelve neolithic clay tokens, the precursor to Proto-cuneiform, were found in the Ubaid levels of the site.Schmandt-Besserat, Denise. Before writing: From counting to cuneiform, Vol. II, University of Texas Press, 1992Overmann, Karenleigh A., The Material Origin of Numbers: Insights from the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Piscataway, NJ, USA: Gorgias Press, Table 9.2, pp. 169–170, 2019 Wright, H. T., "Appendix: The Southern Margins of Sumer. Archaeological Survey of the Area of Eridu and Ur", In: R. M. Adams (ed.), The Heartland of Cities: Survey of Ancient Settlement and Land Use on the Central Flood Plain of the Euphrates (Chicago-London), pp. 295–345, 1981
Uruk period