Eridu (Sumerian Eridug) is an ancient city in southern Iraq, today the mound of Tell Abu Shahrain south-west of Ur, which the Sumerians remembered as the first city on earth. Founded around 5400 BCE in the early Ubaid period, it was the home of the god Enki and his temple, the E-abzu, and it is the first city named in the Sumerian King List: "After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug."
Eridu matters because it sits exactly where myth and archaeology meet. The texts say civilisation began there; the excavations show a sacred building rebuilt on the same spot for well over a thousand years. Whether that continuity is read as a long human tradition or, as Billy Carson reads it, as the memory of the Anunnaki settling the land, Eridu is the place where the Sumerian story of origins starts. For the wider context, start at the Anunnaki topic hub.
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Where is Eridu and what does it look like today?
Eridu is the archaeological site of Tell Abu Shahrain in Dhi Qar province, southern Iraq, in the desert south-west of the ruins of Ur. In antiquity it stood on the edge of the marshes and a lagoon connected to the Gulf. Geophysical work has suggested Eridu functioned as a port on that lagoon rather than a seaside town, which helps explain why the Sumerians tied it so closely to water.
Its name was written with the signs NUN.KI, and the city was abandoned around 600 BCE. In 2016 Eridu was inscribed by UNESCO, together with Uruk and Ur, as part of the World Heritage property "The Ahwar of Southern Iraq: Refuge of Biodiversity and the Relict Landscape of the Mesopotamian Cities".
When was Eridu founded?
Eridu was founded around 5400 BCE, early in the Ubaid period. The Ubaid culture, named after the nearby site of Tell al-Ubaid, is usually dated in southern Mesopotamia to roughly 5300 to 3800 BCE in the common chronology, with earlier phases argued by some scholars. The first settlers built on sand dunes above the marsh.
That date puts Eridu thousands of years after the monumental enclosures of Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia, but well before the full cities, kings and writing that define Sumerian civilisation. Billy Carson's article on Gobekli Tepe, the oldest temple in the world and the ancient civilizations timeline from Gobekli Tepe to Rome show where Eridu falls in that longer sequence.
Who excavated Eridu and what did they find?
Eridu was identified in 1855 by John George Taylor, the British vice-consul at Basra, whose soundings turned up inscribed bricks naming the site. R. Campbell Thompson dug there in 1918 and H. R. Hall in 1919, but the decisive work came between 1946 and 1949, when Fuad Safar and Seton Lloyd excavated on behalf of Iraq's Directorate General of Antiquities. The full report, Eridu, by Safar, Mohammad Ali Mustafa and Lloyd, was not published until 1981.
What Safar and Lloyd exposed beneath the later ziggurat was a stack of eighteen superimposed mud-brick temples, numbered from Level XIX at the bottom to Level I at the top. Levels XIX to VI belong to the Ubaid period; the upper levels run into the Uruk period. At the base sits a tiny single-room shrine with what appears to be an offering table and a niche. Level by level, the building grows, until the late Ubaid temples are large tripartite structures, with a long central hall flanked by side rooms, raised on a platform and decorated with buttressed facades.
This sequence is regularly cited as the clearest evidence in Mesopotamia for continuity of a sacred site: each new temple was built on the ruins of the last, in the same place, following the same basic plan. Later platform temples and ziggurats can be traced back to the form that developed here. The same campaigns also excavated an Ubaid cemetery of roughly 1,000 graves.
Archaeologists returned in recent years. From 2019, Italian and French teams led by Franco D'Agostino of Sapienza University of Rome and Philippe Quenet of the University of Strasbourg resumed fieldwork at Abu Shahrain, and the Strasbourg mission's 2022 campaign re-examined the E-abzu monumental complex itself, with results published in the journal Iraq.
What was the E-abzu, Enki's temple?
The E-abzu was Enki's temple at Eridu, and its name means "House of the Abzu", usually rendered "House of the Aquifer" or "House of the Waters". The abzu (Akkadian apsu) was the body of fresh water believed to lie beneath the earth, the source of springs and rivers, and Enki (Akkadian Ea) was its lord, together with his consort Damgalnuna, later Damkina. In Sumerian literature Enki is the god of fresh water, crafts, magic and wisdom, and the composition known as Enki's Journey to Nibru describes him building his shining house in Eridu before sailing to Nippur to celebrate with the other gods.
The excavations add a physical detail that fits the texts. Fish remains were found deposited in the late Ubaid temples, Levels VIII to VI, and in a related sounding; specialists identified some as marine fish or sea perch from brackish tidal water. Many archaeologists read these deposits as offerings to a water god, an early sign of the cult that later texts attach to Enki. Later kings, including the rulers of the Third Dynasty of Ur who raised a ziggurat over the old temple mound, kept rebuilding the sanctuary long after the city itself had shrunk.
Enki's role in Sumerian myth, and his rivalry with his brother Enlil of Nippur, is covered in depth in Enki and Enlil, the two brothers of Sumerian myth.
A side note on the so-called lizard-headed figurines: Ubaid clay figurines with elongated heads and slanted eyes have been found at Ur and Eridu and feature in reptilian discussions, but archaeologists generally read them as stylised human figures, often female and sometimes holding infants.
What does the Sumerian King List say about Eridu?
The Sumerian King List opens with Eridu as the first seat of kingship. In the Oxford Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature translation, it reads: "After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug. In Eridug, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28800 years. Alaljar ruled for 36000 years." It then states that Eridu fell and kingship was taken to Bad-tibira, and the list continues through Larak, Sippar and Shuruppak until the flood.
The most complete copy is the Weld-Blundell Prism, a clay prism of about 1800 BCE now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Across its eight pre-flood kings the reigns total 241,200 years, all multiples of 3,600, the Sumerian sar. Thorkild Jacobsen's 1939 study The Sumerian King List remains the classic analysis. Mainstream scholars read the pre-flood reigns as mythic or symbolic numbers built in the base-60 system, and note that an older Ur III version of the list has no pre-flood section at all. Billy Carson's take on the full list is set out in the Sumerian King List explained.
What is the Eridu Genesis?
The Eridu Genesis is the modern name for a Sumerian narrative preserved mainly on a damaged tablet from Nippur, dated to around 1600 BCE. The tablet was excavated by the University of Pennsylvania's expedition in 1893, its contents were first identified by Arno Poebel in 1912, and Thorkild Jacobsen gave the story its name in his 1981 article "The Eridu Genesis" in the Journal of Biblical Literature.
The surviving text covers three movements: the creation of humans and animals, the founding of the first cities, and a great flood. The goddess Nintur calls humanity to settle and build; kingship comes down from heaven; five cities are named, with Eridu given to Enki first, followed by Bad-tibira, Larak, Sippar and Shuruppak. When the gods decide to send the flood, Enki warns Ziusudra, a king and priest of Shuruppak, who builds a boat, survives, and is granted life like a god. The parallels with Atrahasis, Utnapishtim in the Gilgamesh epic and the biblical Noah are why Jacobsen chose the word Genesis.
Was Eridu really the first city?
Eridu was the first city in Sumerian tradition, but archaeologists usually give the title of first true city to Uruk. The two claims answer different questions. The Sumerians called Eridu first because it was their oldest sacred centre and the place where, in their story, kingship began. Archaeologists defining a city look for scale, population, hierarchy and administration, and Ubaid Eridu was a temple town rather than a city in that sense.
Uruk is where those features appear together. During the Uruk period, c. 4000 to 3100 BCE, it grew into a settlement of about 250 hectares with, by many estimates, tens of thousands of inhabitants. Its two great precincts, the Eanna dedicated to Inanna and the Anu district with the White Temple on its high terrace, produced monumental architecture on a new scale. The earliest proto-cuneiform tablets, from the Uruk IV phase around 3300 to 3100 BCE, come from the Eanna. On that definition Uruk is the first city, and Eridu is the long religious root that came before it.
Billy Carson's reading
Billy Carson reads Eridu as Enki's real first settlement on earth rather than a mythic founding story. In his video Anunnaki & the Sumerian King List: Eridu to Gobekli Tepe, he treats the opening line of the King List as a literal record: kingship descending from heaven means rule arriving from above the earth, and Alulim and the other pre-flood kings belong to the ruling class the Sumerians called the Anunnaki. On that reading, Eridu's long temple sequence is the physical footprint of Enki's house, built where the texts say he settled.
Carson also takes the reign lengths at face value. Where scholars see symbolic multiples of 3,600, he reads the 241,200 years as the actual tenures of long-lived rulers, a position he develops in his King List video walkthrough, where he connects their longevity to the elixir traditions he discusses elsewhere. He then links Eridu back to Gobekli Tepe as part of a longer thread of inherited knowledge that, in his view, survived catastrophe and resurfaced in Sumer, credited by later scribes to the gods.
These are interpretations, and the distinction matters. The archaeology shows a human community rebuilding a shrine to a water god for more than a millennium; mainstream scholarship treats the King List's early reigns as mythic numbers. Carson's reading asks readers to take the Sumerians' own account of their origins more literally than academic convention does.
Watch, read and go deeper
Billy's full video on Eridu and the King List is embedded on this page, and the longer series is on 4BK TV in Anunnaki: Ancient Secrets Revealed. For an audio version, the podcast episode Sumerian Kings List Explained: Ancient Rulers Who Reigned for 241,200 Years walks through the pre-flood kings. Pair it with the written guide to the Sumerian King List, then return to the Anunnaki topic hub for Enki, Enlil, Nibiru and the rest of the Sumerian record.
Frequently asked questions
Where is Eridu located?
Eridu is the archaeological site of Tell Abu Shahrain in Dhi Qar province, southern Iraq, south-west of the ruins of Ur. In antiquity it lay on the edge of the southern marshes beside a lagoon linked to the Gulf.
How old is Eridu?
Eridu was founded around 5400 BCE, in the early Ubaid period, and was occupied on and off until about 600 BCE. That makes it older than Uruk as a settlement, even though Uruk became a true city first.
Why is Eridu called the first city?
The Sumerians themselves named Eridu as the first city. The Sumerian King List says kingship first descended from heaven to Eridu, and the Eridu Genesis lists it first among the five pre-flood cities, given to the god Enki. Archaeologists, by contrast, usually reserve the title of first true city for Uruk, because of its size, population and early writing.
What god was worshipped at Eridu?
Eridu's god was Enki, called Ea in Akkadian, lord of the abzu, the fresh water beneath the earth, and god of wisdom and crafts. His temple was the E-abzu, the "House of the Aquifer".
Who was Alulim?
Alulim is the first king named in the Sumerian King List, said to have ruled in Eridu for 28,800 years after kingship descended from heaven. Mainstream scholars treat his reign as a mythic number built on the Sumerian unit of 3,600 years. Billy Carson reads Alulim as one of the Anunnaki rulers of the world before the flood.
Sources and further reading
- Fuad Safar, Mohammad Ali Mustafa and Seton Lloyd, Eridu (Baghdad, 1981), the full report of the 1946 to 1949 excavations.
- The Sumerian King List, in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), University of Oxford.
- Enki's Journey to Nibru, in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), University of Oxford.
- Thorkild Jacobsen, "The Eridu Genesis", Journal of Biblical Literature 100 (1981).
- Thorkild Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List (University of Chicago, 1939).
- The Weld-Blundell Prism, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
- Preliminary report on the 2022 campaign of the University of Strasbourg at Abu Shahrayn (Eridu), in the journal Iraq.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, The Ahwar of Southern Iraq: Refuge of Biodiversity and the Relict Landscape of the Mesopotamian Cities (inscribed 2016).
