The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions (1908) (14803110013)

Identifier: archaeologyofcun00sayc (find matches)

Title: The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions

Year: 1908 (1900s)

Authors: Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry), 1845-1933 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (Great Britain). General Literature Committee

Subjects: Cuneiform writing Civilization, Assyro-Babylonian Assyria -- Antiquities

Publisher: London : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge New York : E. S. Gorham

Contributing Library: University of California Libraries

Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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f thesewas Eridu, another was Ur, a third was Borsippa. Of Eridu I have already spoken. Some six oreight thousand years ago it was the sea-port ofprimitive Babylonia.1 Ur, which stood close to it,seems to have been a colony of Nippur, and thereforeof comparatively late origin.2 Borsippa was a smalland unimportant town, which eventually became asuburb of Babylon, and Babylon, on the eastern bankof the Euphrates, was itself a colony of Eridu.3Hence of the cities which stood outside the Edin ofBabylonia, and may therefore belong to an age when 1 Taylor found quantities of sea-shells in its ruins (Journal ofthe Royal Asiatic Society, xv. p. 412). At the time of its found-ation an arm of the sea probably ran up to it from the south-east,though the myth of Adamu describes him as fishing each day inthe waters of the actual Gulf, rather than in an arm of it. 2 The Moon-god of Ur was a son of El-lil, the god ofNippur. 3 For proof of this see my Religion ojthe Ancient Babylonians^p. 105. ______

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THE SUMERIANS 79 Babylonian civilization was still in its infancy, Eridualone is of account. And the priority even of Eriduwas contested. Traditionally Sippara, which is ex-pressly stated to have been in the Edin, claimedto be the oldest of Babylonian cities ; one quarter of itbore the name of Sippara that is from everlasting,and like Eridu, it believed itself to have been the abodeof the first man.1 Thus far, however, the monumentshave given us nothing to substantiate the claim; theculture-god of Babylonia was Ea of Eridu, not theSun-god of Sippara, and for the present, therefore,we must look to the shore of the Persian Gulf,rather than to the land of Eden for the cradle ofBabylonian civilization. At any rate, both Sippara and Eridu were ofSumerian foundation, as indeed were nearly all thegreat cities of Babylonia. Eridu was a later form ofthe older Eri-dugga, the good city, a name whichseems to have been the starting-point of more thanone legend. The growth of the coast to the south

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1908

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