Near East Kingdoms

Eridu / Eridug (City State) (Sumer)

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The city states of Sumer formed one of the first great civilisations in human history (see feature link). This Near Eastern civilisation emerged a little way ahead of that of Africa's ancient Egypt, and up to a millennium before that of the Indus Valley culture. It developed out of the end of the Pottery Neolithic across the Fertile Crescent, a period which had seen Neolithic Farmer practices spread far and wide across the Near East and beyond.

As irrigation improved so the more southerly reaches of the Euphrates could at last be occupied by humans and their animals. Southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and the western edge of Iran) was subjected to permanent settlement, initially in the form of pastoralists but soon as farmers too. Cultures around the edges of this progression included the Hassuna and Samarra which began this settlement process, and perhaps elements of the Hissar culture in the Iranian highlands were also involved.

By the late fourth millennium BC, Sumer was divided into approximately a dozen city states which were independent of one another and which used local canals and boundary stones to mark their borders. Many early historical events in the region are found only in the Sumerian king list, which notates the rulers of the city states (and see feature link), but archaeology has also uncovered a wealth of detail.

Situated around twenty-four kilometres to the south-west of the later city of Ur in Sumer's southern reaches, Eridu was said to be one of the five cities to have been built 'Before the Flood'. According to Sumerian mythology, Eridu was founded by the Sumerian deity named Enki, later known by the Akkadians as Ea, god of water and wisdom.

Archaeology confirms the city's early appearance - around 5400-5300 BC - in a Sumeria was which populated rather late in the Neolithic period. Ubaid culture can be split into three phases between 5300-3900 BC (see feature link), with the first being 'Early Ubaid' or 'Early Eridu', which lasted until 4700 BC. The site of Eridu, now a tell or archaeological mound known as Abu Shahrein, may well have been one of the earliest opportunities in Sumer to begin true farming practices. Even Sumer's 'world creation' myth names it as the first city.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, Gwendolyn Leick (Penguin Books, 2001), from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character, Samuel Noah Kramer ('List 1' of Sumerian rulers, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1963), from Political Change and Cultural Continuity in Eshnunna from the Ur III to the Old Babylonian Period, Clemens Reichel (List of Eshnunna's rulers, providing some names which are not on the Bruce R Gordon list as part of a dissertation proposal for the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, 11 June 1996), from First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies, Peter Bellwood (Second Ed, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Heywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from The Ancient Near East, c.3000-330 BC, Amélie Kuhrt (Routledge, 2000, Vol I & II), from Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, Michael Road (Facts on File, 2000), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Enrico Ascalone (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007), from The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, S Lloyd (Revised Ed, London, 1984), from Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History, J N Postgate (Routledge, 1994), from The First Empires, J N Postgate (Oxford 1977), from History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC, Marc van der Mieroop (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007), from Ancient History: A Theory About Ancient Times, L C Gerts (List 4 of Sumerian rulers, Chapter 12: The Sumerian king list, 2002), from Mesopotamia, Chris Scarre (Ed, Past Worlds - The Times Atlas of Archaeology, Guild Publishing, London 1989), from The Age of the God-Kings, Kit van Tulleken (Ed, Time Life Books, Amsterdam 1987), and from External Links: Ancient Worlds, and Archaeobotany: Plant Domestication, Chris Stevens & Leilani Lucas (Reference Module in Social Sciences, 2023, available via Science Direct), and The Sumerian Kings List, J A Black, G Cunningham, E Fluckiger-Hawker, E Robson, & G Zólyomi ('List 2' of Sumerian rulers, available via the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford, 1998), and Ancient History, Anthony Michael Love ('List 3' of Sumerian rulers at Sarissa.org), and Eshnunna (the late Bruce R Gordon's Regnal Chronologies list of Eshnunna's rulers, providing some names which are missing from the Clemens Reichel list), and Images from History (University of Alabama).)

c.5300 BC

The Sumerian city states rise to power during the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods (5300-2900 BC), but the historical record only begins to emerge with the 'Early Dynastic' period from circa 2900-2334 BC, although it remains rather thin until the Lagash dynastic period begins circa 2550 BC.

This reconstruction of a Sumerian temple provides some idea of how such religious buildings would have connected with the city around them

The early city states of Sumer in order of ascendance are as follows: Eridu (from about 5400-5300 BC), Bad-tibira, Larak, Sippar, Shuruppak, and Nippur (usually without a kingship of its own). Other antediluvian cities exist ('Before the Flood'), but without any known kingships of their own. Instead these flourish later.

Eridu's earliest occupation layer is also the one with the highest number, as 'Level I' is the topmost archaeological layer, the first to be found when digging but also the most recent. The oldest is 'Layer XVIII' of about 5300 BC, with its single-room 'chapel' on the raised main mound.

c.4900 BC

The 'Early Ubaid Level XV' archaeology at Eridu displays one of the earliest temples here. It is still primitive, being a like-for-like rebuild of the original temple. It is located on a raised 'dune of clean sand' which is largely surrounded by a depression around six metres below the level of surrounding land.

The Sumerian flood story includes a depiction of a large vessel which is packed with various objects and, presumably, animals, clearly showing a basis for the later Old Testament flood story of Noah and the ark

This swampy area becomes a virtual lake during high-water months. This lagoon is the Sumerian abzu, the waters of the world from which the first land is created by the god Marduk. Eridu becomes the centre of a cult of the god or goddess of sweet water.

c.4500 BC

'Early Ubaid Level XII' comes to an end around this time, with the temple structure apparently being demolished again, the foundations being filled in and levelled, and a new, grander structure being erected.

Pottery shows that Eridu's sedentary population has been using entirely local wares ('Eridu ware') up until now. This stops at the end of 'Level XIII' around or shortly before 4500 BC, and outside wares become popular. The reason is not known.

Some of the earliest cities, such as Sippar, Borsippa, and Kish in the north, and Ur, Uruk, and Eridu in the south, formed the endpoints of what became the complex Sumerian network of cities and canals (click or tap on map to view full sized)

c.3900 BC

As early as 8000 BC, during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, small clay tokens of various distinctive shapes are evidently being used by Near Eastern farmers to keep an inventory of their commodities. A cone-shaped token, for instance, may indicate that a farmer has a certain amount of barley in his granary.

This already-ancient system is greatly expanded during the Uruk IV period which begins around 3900 BC. The ancient Sumerian religious centre of Eridu - already a millennium old - is gradually surpassed in size by the nearby city of Uruk. It also declines, with the last temple gradually becoming increasingly dilapidated.

Metalwork appears at this time too, marking the beginning of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) and the fading of the stone age period which had seen Neolithic Farmer practices transform human lives between about 10,000-4000 BC.

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) lasted in the Levant until the middle of the sixth millennium BC, but the lack of pottery certainly did not prevent rapid advances in early farming techniques and the creation of settled town life, as shown by this sample PPN house at Beidha

As Uruk increasingly commands local attention, so Eridu ceases to be a village and instead becomes nothing more than the main, faded, temple. The rest is left to the encroaching sands, before the temple itself is abandoned a century or two later, around 2800/2700 BC. This is seemingly not long after the presumed short kingship in or about the twenty-ninth century BC.

fl c.2874? BC

Ruled for 28,800 years (8 years?).

fl c.2866? BC

Ruled for 36,000 years (10 years?).

c.2500 BC

The abandoned site of Eridu only becomes important once again at the start of 'Early Dynastic II', around 2500 BC. Either a ruler of first dynasty Ur or a local governor builds a palace there, formed of two identical large buildings side-by-side. The temple is again in use.

The ruins of the once-vast city of Ur were excavated in 1922 by Sir Leonard Woolley, which is when the 'Royal Tombs' were discovered

c.2334 BC

Sumerian domination of southern Mesopotamia comes to the end with the rise of the Akkadian empire around this point in time. Following the Gutian period, there is a brief 'Sumerian renaissance' at Ur in the twenty-second century BC, but this is cut short circa 2004 BC by an Elamite invasion.

The Elamites are pushed out six years later by Amorites. Their own dynasties in Isin and Larsa persist until circa 1763 BC when Mesopotamia is united under the rule of the Amorite Babylonian empire.

c.2200 BC

This point seems to mark the end of a period of success, as shown by a layer of destruction and the burning of the Hatti citadel (part of a decline which is seen across the entire region, including at Tuba in Syria, Eridu and Uruk in Sumer, Troy, and in Egypt).

Babylon began life as a modest town which had been seized from Kazallu, but was quickly fortified by the building of a city wall in the nineteenth century BC

c.2045 BC

By this point, perhaps a millennium after hosting the kingship, the city of Eridu has again declined. A great renovator of Sumer's ancient sites, Amar-Sin of Ur attempts to rebuild the ziggurat, destroying the remains of the grand palace of about 2500 BC in the process, but the attempt has to be abandoned during his reign of less than a decade.

In fact much of the region is in decline in this period as it apparently undergoes a climate-induced collapse. Uruk has been struck and defeated by the Gutians at the same time as they have destroyed Agade and carried off the Sumerian kingship. Egypt is similarly affected.

As far as Eridu is concerned, the city is abandoned during the reign of Amar-Sin of Ur as salinity problems have made agricultural pursuits in this region unprofitable.

The Zagros Mountain range provided the Gutians with their home, from their assumed arrival in the region around the period between 2450-2350 BC onwards, as it did the later Medes and Persians

c.2004 BC

The waning Sumerian civilisation collapses around 2004 BC when the Elamite king, Kindattu, together with the people of Susa, sacks Ur and captures King Ibbi-Sin. The great brick mausoleums and temples of the third dynasty kings are destroyed and the king is carried off into captivity.

Having claimed the kingship, Isin's rulers repair the brickwork at Eridu but tunnel extensively for treasures. By the eighteenth century BC, Hammurabi of Babylon has seemingly moved all of the temple staff to Ur, once more leaving Eridu to the sands.

There is little evidence of occupation after this date, although its ruins could be lightly used as a seasonal settlement until the Neo-Babylonian period at about 600 BC.