Traditionally the oldest city in Mesopotamia and the world, Eridu was the sacred city of the god Enki and the starting point of the Sumerian King List, whose founding marks the beginning of urban civilization in the ancient Near East.
Abandoned c. 600 BCE, probably due to increasing soil salinity from continuous irrigation and the shifting of the Euphrates River away from the site; the city had been one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in the world, inhabited since c. 5400 BCE.
The atlas holds 5 border frames for Eridu — the shape you scrub through changes in 5000 BC · 2600 BC · 2500 BC · 2149 BC · 2099 BC.
Covers Eridu's foundational role in the emergence of southern Mesopotamian urbanism.
A non-specialist survey of Sumerian civilization and its city-states, providing the context in which Kish, Eridu, and their rivals held kingship.
Era/regional survey covering the Ubaid origins of Mesopotamian urbanism and Eridu's place as the traditional oldest city.