The urban settlement was centered on a large temple complex built of mudbrick, within a small depression that allowed water to accumulate. The oldest agrarian settlement seems to have been based upon intensive subsistence irrigation agriculture derived from the Samarra culture to the north, characterised by the building of canals, and mud-brick buildings. Nomads living in tents in semi-desert areas.Īll three cultures seem implicated in the earliest levels of the city.Samarra culture Living in rectangular houses.Fisher-hunter cultures of the Arabian littoral living in reed houses.Eridu was formed at the confluence of three separate ecosystems, supporting three distinct lifestyles, that came to an agreement about access to fresh water in a desert environment. Excavation has shown that the city was founded on a virgin sand-dune site with no previous occupation. 5400 BC, close to the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Euphrates River. His temple was called E-Abzu, as Enki was believed to live in Abzu, an aquifer from which all life was believed to stem.įoundation, tricultures and decline Fired clay brick stamped with the name of Amar-Sin, Ur III, from Eridu, currently housed in the British MuseumĮridu is one of the earliest settlements in the region, founded c. In Sumerian mythology, Eridu was originally the home of Enki, later known by the Akkadians as Ea, who was considered to have founded the city. With the temples growing upward and the village growing outward, a larger city was built. These buildings were made of mud brick and built on top of one another. Located 12 kilometers southwest of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew around temples, almost in sight of one another.
Eridu is believed to be the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia.
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