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Updated: May 8, 2025
The god Ea appears to have been originally the local deity of Eridu, a city which in early times stood on the Persian Gulf. It is not certain that this was his original rôle, but it was, in any case, assigned him in the course of the theistic construction.
There was Eridu, where Ea was lord of man. There was Ur, where Sin was lord of the moon. There were other divinities. There was Enmesara, lord of the land whence none return, and Makhir, god of dreams.
The alluvial deposits made by the Euphrates yearly have already demonstrated that Babylon lay much nearer at one time to the Persian Gulf than it does at present. The original seat of Ea, whose worship continued through all times to enjoy great popularity at Babylon, was at Eridu, which, we know, once lay on the Persian Gulf, but does so no longer.
The old city of Ur, once the seat of the dominant dynasty of Chaldæan kings, formed part of his dominions; Nipur, now Niffer, fell into his hands like the seaport Eridu on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and in one of his inscriptions he celebrates his conquest of "the ancient city of Erech."
This conception is more clearly emphasized by the parallelism implied between Eridu and the 'deep. The 'formation' of Apsu corresponds to the 'structure' made by Marduk according to the first version, as the seat of Ea. The waters were not created by Marduk, but they were confined by him within a certain space. In a vague way, the 'deep' itself rested in a vast tub.
No city had been created, no creature had been made, Nippur had not been created, Ekur had not been built, Erech had not been created, Eanna had not been built, Apsû had not been created, Eridu had not been built, Of the holy house, the house of the gods, the habitation had not been created. All lands were sea. Here we have the definite statement that before Creation all the world was sea.
We may note that the true reading of the name of the founder of the dynasty of Ur has now been ascertained from a syllabary to be Ur-Engur; and an unpublished chronicle in the British Museum relates that his son Dungi cared greatly for the city of Eridu, but sacked Babylon and carried off its spoil, together with the treasures from E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk.
The great political and religious centers of Babylonia, such as Ur, Sippar, Agade, Eridu, Nippur, Uruk, perhaps also Lagash, and later on Babylon, formed the foci of literary activity, as they were the starting-points of commercial enterprise.
Ea, as the god of the Persian gulf, the region which forms the starting-point of Babylonian culture, and around which some of the oldest and most precious recollections center, would come within the radius of the third instance, since, in the period we have in mind, Eridu no longer enjoyed any political importance.
Building stone from Magan had already been imported to Babylonia by Ur-Nina, a king of Lagas, and grandfather of E-ana-gin, but it must have been brought in the ships of Eridu. Naram-Sin's son was Bingani-sar-ali. A queen, Ellat-Gula, seems to have sat on the throne not many years later, and with her the dynasty may have come to an end. At any rate, the empire of Akkad is heard of no more.
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