Ruins of the Sumerian city Eridu.The Sumerians considered Eridu to be the oldest city in the world.

Ruins of the Sumerian city Eridu.The Sumerians considered Eridu to be the oldest city in the world. It was the home of Enki, god of wisdom and water, who had raised itfrom the watery marshes.  Here the gods had established the kingship,and the divine decrees that governed civilization, known as the meh.Enki’s temple at Eridu is the oldest Mesopotamian temple found sofar.  It was rebuilt over thousands of years, with its earliest phasec. 5500 BC.  At this time, it measured about 3.6 x 4.5 metres, andwas made of mud-brick.  It had a simple altar or podium forsacrifices, and a niche to hold a statue of Enki.A later niche has fishbones and ashes scattered on the floor aroundthe altar.  The fish would have been sacrificed to Enki, who began asa local fresh water god before developing into one of the mostimportant deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon.  Eridu was located inthe southern marshes of the Euphrates River, and both the city andthe god feature in the earliest version of the Great Flood myth.The Eridu Genesis (composed c. 2300 BC) gives us the earliest versionof this tale.  The gods had created humanity, but Enlil (king of thegods) grew tired of humanity’s noise and decided to destroy them. Enki ordered the good man Utnapishtim (sometimes called Atrahasis orZiusudra) to build a huge boat and gather inside it the “seed oflife”.  Later, the gods relented and decided simply to control thehuman population by introducing death and disease.The Great Flood myth may have come about because of a serious floodin c. 2800 BC, when the Euphrates rose high above its banks andflooded the region.  Leonard Woolley’s excavations in 1922 AD found a2.5-metre layer of silt and clay, which seems to support the claim ofa catastrophic flood in this area.  However, the flood was local, notglobal.Also found at Eridu was an earlier version of the Garden of Edenstory.  Tagtug the weaver (or gardener) had been told not to eat thefruit of the forbidden tree in the garden.  He did so anyway, andEnki cursed him for it.Eridu is also associated with the tale of the great sage Adapa (sonof Enki).  Enki initiated Adapa into the meaning of life and allunderstanding, but he didn’t give him what he really wanted – theknowledge of life without death, or immortality.  Enki tricked Adapaand denied him this knowledge.The desire for immortality features prominently in Mesopotamianliterature, especially in Sumerian writings.  It is epitomized in thestory of Gilgamesh of Uruk, who may have been a real person and king. -- source link

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