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Updated: June 8, 2025


The Anunnaki he created together And bestowed glorious epithets upon the glorious city, the seat dear to their heart. The 'glorious city' is Eridu, though the compiler would have us apply it to Babylon. With the founding of Eridu, a limit was fixed for the 'deep. The rest of the dry land is formed according to the theory of the writer by the extension of this place.

The position of Ur on the western bank of the Euphrates exposed it to the attacks of the Semitic tribes of northern Arabia, and thus accustomed its inhabitants to the use of arms, while at the same time its proximity to Eridu made it a centre of trade. In Abrahamic days it had long been a place of resort and settlement by Arabian and Canaanite merchants.

The evidence we thus obtain that the early Sumerians themselves regarded Eridu as the first city in the world to be created, increases the hope that future excavation at Abu Shahrain may reveal Sumerian remains of periods which, from an archaeological standpoint, must still be regarded as prehistoric. Cf. Poebel, op. cit., p. 41.

One of the oldest is Ea of Eridu, a town which stood in old times at the head of the Persian Gulf. He is a god of the deep, whether it was that he was considered to have come over the water from another land, or whether he is connected with the belief which was held in Babylonia as elsewhere, that all things originally arose out of the abyss.

In some places it was the moon god Sin, as at Haran and Ur beside the desert; elsewhere, as at Nippur, Bel, or at Eridu near the Persian Gulf, Ea, the god of the great deep, was revered. In the name of the local deity offerings were brought, hymns were sung, and traditions were treasured, which extolled his might. The life of these little city states centred about the temple and its cult.

Thus we have no guarantee that the other cities referred to by name in the text, Nippur, Erech, and Eridu, are mentioned in any significant connexion with each other. Of the actual cause of Creation the text appears to give two versions also, one in its present form impersonal, and the other carried out by a god.

It is not improbable that in the original form of the Babylonian epic it was Ea who sent the flood and saved one man a natural representation for the god of Eridu; in later recensions of the poem it is first Bel and then Marduk who assumes the principal rôle.

The Semitic poem itself also supplies evidence of the independent existence of the Dragon myth apart from the process of Creation, for the story of Ea and Apsû, which it incorporates, is merely the local Dragon myth of Eridu.

The driver of Ningirsu's chariot was the god Ensignun; it was his duty to keep the sacred chariot as bright as the stars of heaven, and morning and evening to tend and feed Ningirsu's sacred ass, called Ug-kash, and the ass of Eridu.

To cut the long story short, Gudea decided to seek the help of Ninâ, "the child of Eridu", who, as daughter of Enki, the God of Wisdom, could divine all the mysteries of the gods. But first of all by sacrifices and libations he secured the mediation of his own city-god and goddess, Ningirsu and Gatumdug; and then, repairing to Ninâ's temple, he recounted to her the details of his vision.

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