FABZ Pi 👽 ▬▬ι═══════

Atop what's left of the ziggurat of ERIDU in the deep south of Iraq, with the ruins of this ancient, fabled city in the background. Photo by my wife Santha Faiia. Eridu was tough to find but finally having our feet on the ground here was a dream come true (despite temperatures in the mid-40's Celsius and bullets and shell-casings left by rival groups of looters littered everywhere amongst fragments of pottery and baked bricks with cuneiform inscriptions). Eridu features in the Sumerian King List as the first and oldest of the cities that existed before the global Flood that devastated mankind, and Eridu's Flood story is recognized as the earliest-surviving written predecessor of the Flood of Noah described in the Old Testament and in the Quran. Enki, trickster, magician and god of wisdom, was the primary deity of ancient Eridu. In Mesopotamian traditions it is he who warns Ziusudra (the Sumerian archetype of the patriarch Noah) that the Flood, sent by the storm god Enlil, will soon sweep over the land and that he must prepare a survival ship -- an Ark -- to secure the future of humanity. So much more to say, so many complex Mesopotamian variations (often with different names) of the original Sumerian story, but it will all be in the new book I'm writing. Meanwhile our next stop on this amazing journey will be Shuruppak.