90-1 ERIDU

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Eridu: (Sumerian City State).

Said to be the first and oldest  Sumerian city and  capital of the Early Dynastic Period

 t was around 7,500 years ago when the village of Eridu formed The inhabitants of the marshlands who lived in reed huts and survived by hunting and fishing may be as close to the original Sumerians as anthropology will let us glimpse. These marsh dwellers joined with proto-Semitic speaking herdsman who had spread south along the Euphrates over thousands of years of migrations and with the canal builders of the central Tigris and Euphrates region. Together these three cultures linked technology and created a stable food supply that allowed for the development of a large sedentary community.

Around 6,000 years ago Eridu was a walled town, but it was not the walls that eventually made it a city.3 3,500 years earlier the town of Jericho in Palestine boasted impressive walls and 2,000 years after that Çatalhöyük in southern Anatolia had a dense population living in an equally well fortified community. However, these earlier settlements had never shown the kind of specialization which later occurred in Eridu. The original Sumerian city developed a broad profile of professionals and a crucial social barrier was crossed when families no longer provided for their own food but could rather rely on an organized system of food gathering, storage and distribution.

At this time southern Mesopotamia was united by a shared culture known as Ubaid
“After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridu. In Eridu, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28800 years.”

Following the Ubaid period, which likely saw Eridu dominate southern Iraq culturally, the city of Uruk is credited with the next evolution   group of cities, Ur, Larsa, Zabalam, Urum, Kesh, and Jemdet Nasr were sending goods to the temple of Anu, in Uruk. Around 2050 BCE there was a precipitous decline of the Eridu’s wealth. This was likely caused by further recession of the gulf coast and an increasingly unreliable water table. This ecological change led to the temple ziggurat of Amar-sin being left uncompleted