Eridu
Eridu is an ancient city of Low Mésopotamie, currently located in Iraq. Its ruins are on the Tel. Abu Shahrain, located on bank of the Euphrate, to 15 km in the south-west of Ur.
The site was prospected by J.E. Taylor in 1854 and by R. Campbell Thompson in 1918, then H.R. Hall in 1919. More complete excavations were carried out between 1946 and 1950 by the service of antiquities of Iraq, under the direction of F. Safar, assist by S. Lloyd as from 1948. Eridu did not deliver an important material epigraphic.
According to the tradition sumérienne such as one finds it in royal Liste sumérienne, Eridu is the first city to have received the royalty when this one, according to the expression of this text, “is descended from the Sky”. At the historical periods, this city was however never the seat of a powerful kingdom. It is on the other hand an important city on the religious level, since it is the city of the large god Enki/Ea, where its large temple is, É.Abzu. If it is sometimes mentioned like an important port, Eridu is however not located at the edge of the Persian Gulf at the historical times, but rather on a lagoon connected to the sea.
It is around the crowned zone, located at the center of the Tel., that the excavations concentrated. This one was pregnant by a quadrangular interior wall of 400 X 300 meters on sides. 19 archaeological levels there were located, which allowed the constitution of a long important chronological sequence for our knowledge of the protohistoire of the south mésopotamien.
The oldest levels, XIX to XV, correspond to the Period of Obeid 1. The following period, Obeid 2 Hajji Mohammad, goes from levels XIV to XII, Obeid 3, from XI to VIII, and Obeid 4, from VII to VI. One found fourteen “temples” on terrace superimposed during time, testifying to a great continuity over one very long period. It is one of the most impressive examples of the appearance of monumental architecture into Low Mésopotamie. A cemetery of the end of Obeid was explored in the North-West of the site.
The Period of Uruk is represented by the levels V with I, but it delivered few things in the crowned district. One on the other hand found a building of the end of this period elsewhere on the tel.
For the antiquated Dynastic , a palate was found in the north of the site. At the end of thousand-year-old IIIè, king Ur-Nammu d' Ur restores the temple of Enki and there assistant a Ziggourat. Like the majority of the basic sites Mésopotamie, Eridu was abandoned in the current of the {{XVIIIe}} 17th centuries, and was not any more the place of an important occupation thereafter, even if Nabuchodonosor II of Babylon restored there the sanctuary of Enki at the beginning of the 6th century.
External bond
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Site presenting of the plans of the site of Eridu and its buildings.