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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298043082 Was Eridu The First City in Sumerian Mythology? Article · January 2015 CITATIONS 0 READS 638 1 author: Peeter Espak University of Tartu 33 PUBLICATIONS 30 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Peeter Espak on 13 March 2016. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Was Eridu The First City in Sumerian Mythology?1 PEETER ESPAK Abstract The majority of written sources known to us from ca 2500–1500 B.C. do not give Eridu any special status as the ﬁ rst or primordial mythological city. Only the mythology and royal ideol- ogy of Šulgi seems to have made that exception. Due to its hypo- thetical original sacred nature, Eridu was one of the central points of religious and intellectual worship during the whole history of the An- cient Near East. However, the underlining of Eridu’s special divine status in early Mesopotamian mythology in contemporary scientiﬁ c treatises often seems exaggerated. The current paper discusses the mythological and ideological signiﬁ cance of the city of Eridu based on several ancient royal inscriptions and mythological accounts and concludes that in Sumerian mythology we can call Eridu one of the most sacred religious and cultural centres among others, comparable to Nippur, Ur, and Uruk—but not “the ﬁ rst city.” Keywords Sumerian mythology, Early Dynastic royal ideology, Eridu, Enki, Nippur, Marduk Although there is no proof that the city of Eridu was considered to be “the most ancient city” in Sumero-Akkadian mythology, this under- standing has a strong inﬂ uence on our entire picture of the Mesopota- mian mythology, religion, and history. The ancient primordial impor- tance of Eridu is usually stated without any actual proof—be it textual or archaeological—and simply as “common sense knowledge” beyond any doubt. The ancient cultic importance of Eridu is indeed conﬁ rmed by archaeological and textual evidence. It is also certain that the god 1 The current paper has been supported by the Estonian Science Council grant PUT500 and ETF8993. Was Eridu The First City in Sumerian Mythology? 54 Enki of Eridu must have been a major ﬁ gure in the religious concepts of the inhabitants of Sumer already in the beginning of the 3rd millennium, although the archaeological evidence from his Eridu temple does not give any conclusive hints about the possible original nature of that god. Eridu was situated in a lagoon-based territory or marshland—a pos- sible explanation of why in later mythology Enki is associated with marshes, reed-beds, canals and rivers.2 From layer VIII of the ancient Eridu temple, different clay coils, possibly representations of snakes, were found. Snakes are always associable with chthonic cults or under- world cults in different archaic religions of the world,3 and it is reason- able to suggest that the snake ﬁ gurines were brought to the temple in the hope that they could carry a prayer to the underworld region of the god of Eridu, later known under the name Abzu. Also, burnt ﬁ sh-offerings were found from layer VI of the temple. As we know, ﬁ sh and goat-ﬁ sh were later the best known symbols of the god Enki at least from the Sargonic period onwards. However, it is also known that ﬁ sh offerings4 were common in several other ancient temple cites in archaic Mesopo- tamia, such as Uruk and Lagaš; and therefore directly associating the ancient ﬁ sh-offerings at the archaic site of Eridu with Enki’s later ﬁ sh- symbol and his “archaic nature” remains doubtful.5 The archaeological evidence reveals nothing about the actual reli- gious beliefs and folklore of the pre-literate society; neither does it give any information about the possible overall cultic importance of the site and its god in Southern Mesopotamia. Eridu must have originally been an archaic cultic sacred meeting place for the inhabitants from a wider area of southern parts of Mesopotamia. Later the cultic place developed into a larger complex of buildings and ﬁ nally into a city. Eridu’s politi- cal or military signiﬁ cance during the 3rd millennium and also earlier Mesopotamia does not seem to be high, and in the ﬁ rst available mytho- logical texts and royal inscriptions, the cities of Nippur, Ur, Uruk, etc. are most certainly portrayed as substantially more important than the 2 See: Safar, Mustafa, and Lloyd 1981: 33 for the description of the geographical features of Eridu. 3 Cf. Charvát 2002: 47; 1993: 69. 4 Buren 1952: 76–77; 1948: 101ff. 5 One of the best examples of understanding ancient objects for something they actually never were are Eridu’s ancient “boat models” later reinterpreted as spinning bowls used by weavers: Strasser 1996: 920–926. 55 Peeter Espak city of Eridu. Due to its hypothetical original sacred nature, Eridu still remained one of the central points of religious and intellectual worship during the whole history of the Ancient Near East. However, the under- lining of Eridu’s special divine status in early Mesopotamian mythology in contemporary scientiﬁ c treatises often seems exaggerated. One of the texts still commonly used to give proof of the possible early pre-eminence of Eridu is the Early Dynastic short creation account known as Urukagina 15 (Ukg. 15), found from Girsu (Louvre, Paris, AO 4153). A more recent example of this text being used to prove Eridu’s early importance is given by W. W. Hallo in his paper “Founding Myths of Cities in the Ancient Near East: Mesopotamia and Israel:”6 The ﬁ rst city in Sumerian tradition was undoubtedly Eridu. This is stated in so many words, albeit negatively, in one of the oldest, if not the oldest, ex- amples of Sumerian mythology—hence also one whose translation is beset with difﬁ culties. Following van Dijk, I translate lines 7ff., as follows: “At that time Enki and Eridu (!) had not appeared Enlil did not exist Ninlil did not exist Brightness was dust Vegetation was dust The daylight did not shine The moonlight did not emerge.” In other words, the poet pictures a primordial time before day and night, before vegetation, before some of the great gods, and before any cities, even the ﬁ rst one, Eridu. True, the line mentioning Eridu (NUN.KI) is rendered differently in some translations. Sollberger, for example, rendered it “en ce temps-là, Enki ne créait plus dans Eridu”. Wilcke translated: “Damals wohnten die Herren der Orte, die Fürsten der Orte, noch nicht.” Alster echoed this with: “At that time the (divine) earth lord and the (divine) earth lady (NIN!.KI) did not exist yet.” And even van Dijk modiﬁ ed his earlier reading from NUN.KI to nun-ki, i.e., presumably, from “Eridu” to “prince(s) of the earth/place(s).”7 6 Hallo 2000: 37–50; 2010: 547–572. 7 Hallo 2010: 548–549. Hallo uses van Dijk’s interpretation (1964: 40) and the logic presented in his own previous interpretation (Hallo 1970: 65–66) about the nature of Eridu and the Ukg. 15. Alster (1970: 190) correctly identiﬁ ed the sentence containing the primordial gods en-ki and nun-ki / nin-ki. Cf. Wilke 1969: 132. Was Eridu The First City in Sumerian Mythology? 56 Hallo agrees that the Ukg. 15 account is always interpreted differently in most modern translations—i.e. Enki and Nunki gods, instead of Enki and Eridu. However, he says that the newer and more obvious inter- pretation does not change the content actually intended by the original author(s), since the ancient mythology is obscure, and as proof conﬁ rm- ing this viewpoint, he offers a late (Kassite? Neo- or Late-Babylonian?) bilingual creation account that should prove that Eridu is referred to in Ukg. 15: But if these scholars have succeeded in recovering the original understand- ing of the line, that understanding must have been lost long ago. The bilin- gual myth sometimes entitled “The Founding of Eridu,” which Falkenstein ascribed to (late) Kassite times (ca. 1400–1100 BCE), includes a line that states (in Heidel’s translation): “The Apsu had not been made, Eridu had not been built.” Since the deity Enki is intimately associated with the Apsu, we have here a virtual equivalent of the older version.8 The Ukg. 159 certainly describes the cosmic marriage of An and Ki, and instead of Enki and Eridu, the primordial pair of divine ﬁ gures enki- ninki / enki-nunki is implied. The interpretation that Enki and his city Eridu were referred to in line ii 2 of the text was given by J. van Dijk in 1964: u4-ba en-ki eridu(NUN)ki nu-si12: “Ce jour-là, Enki (et) Eridu n’avait pas commencé à exister,” which he himself couple of years later corrected, admitting his previous translation was wrong.10 Although W. Horowitz seems to claim that “On that day Enki in Eridu…”11 still re- mains an option, taking into account the verb used and en-ki’s name written without the determinative, all of the recent editions of the text interpret the passage without any reference to the city of Eridu being “born” or “existing” as the ﬁ rst entity: 8 Hallo 2010: 549. 9 Rubio 2013: 5–6; Lisman 2013: 230–235; Sjöberg 2002: 230–231; Horowitz 1998: 140–141; Dijk 1964: 40 uploads/Geographie/ was-eridu-the-first-city-in-sumerian-mythology.pdf