sourced story
founded c. 5400 BCEReputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Eridu, Remembered as the First City

The Sumerians themselves believed kingship first came down to earth at this southern temple town

On the timeline · around founded c. 5400 BCE · Settlement to the First CitiesSettlement to the First CitiesEridu, Remembered as the First City7,500 BCE7,000 BCE6,500 BCE6,000 BCE5,500 BCE5,000 BCE4,500 BCE4,000 BCE3,500 BCE3,000 BCE

Quick facts

Modern site
Abu Shahrein, Iraq
Founded
c. 5400 BCE
Patron deity
Enki, god of wisdom and fresh water
Sumerian tradition
Regarded as the first city, home of the gods

What happened

Eridu, at the site now called Abu Shahrein in southern Iraq, was founded around 5400 BCE and grew into what the Sumerians themselves regarded as the first city on earth. It sat near the head of the Persian Gulf marshlands, and its earliest levels show a small shrine that was rebuilt and enlarged over centuries into a temple complex dedicated to Enki, the god of fresh water and wisdom. Sumerian myth held that Enki made his home there and that the gifts of civilization, agriculture, crafts, and kingship, first passed from Eridu to the world. The city was continuously occupied through the Ubaid period, the era of village culture named for the nearby site of Tell al-'Ubaid, before political and religious primacy shifted north to Uruk.

Why it matters

Eridu shows the transition in progress rather than a single leap: a shrine that keeps getting rebuilt on the same spot, growing grander each time as the community around it grows. Its religious authority set a pattern, a city organized around a temple economy, that Uruk and every later Sumerian city-state would follow.

How we know

Eridu's mound was excavated across multiple seasons revealing a sequence of at least seventeen rebuilt temple levels stacked on the same foundation, alongside Ubaid-period pottery that lets archaeologists date the earliest occupation to around 5400 BCE.

Sources

See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.

Part of a timelineAncient Mesopotamia30 events · The land between the rivers where farming villages became cities, cuneiform became writing, and kings first wrote their laws downView all →
Eridu, Remembered as the First City · Ancient Mesopotamia · SourcedStory