Confining ourselves here to the earlier phases of Ea, it seems probable that he was originally regarded as the god of Eridu,--one of the most ancient of the holy cities of Southern Babylonia, now represented by Abu-Shahrein, and which once stood on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Ur-Bau expressly calls the god the 'king of Eridu.' The sacredness of the place is attested by Gudea, who boasts of having made the temple of Nin-girsu as sacred as Eridu.[43] It is over this city that Ea watches. The importance of the Persian Gulf to the growth of the city, would make it natural to place the seat of the god in the waters themselves. The cult of water-deities arises, naturally, at places which are situated on large sheets of water; and in the attributes of wisdom which an older age ascribed to Ea, there may be seen the embodiment of the tradition that the course of civilization proceeds from the south. The superiority of the Persian Gulf over the other waters of Babylon--over the two great rivers with their tributary streams and canals--would be another factor that would lead to the god of the Persian Gulf being regarded as the personification of the watery element in general. For the Babylonians, the Persian Gulf, stretching out indefinitely, and to all appearances one with the great ocean whose ulterior shores could not be reached, was the great 'Okeanos,' that flowed around the earth and on which the earth rested. Ea, accordingly (somewhat like En-lil), was delocalized, as it were, and his worship was maintained long after the recollection of his connection with Eridu had all but disappeared. At the same time, for the very reason that he was cut loose from local associations, no place could lay claim to being the seat of the deity. Ur-Bau, when erecting a sanctuary to Ea at Girsu, significantly calls the god 'the king of Eridu.' The sanctuary is not, in this case, the dwelling-place of the god. We are justified, therefore, in going back many centuries, before reaching the period when Ea was, merely, the local god of Eridu. Whether Ea is to be regarded as the real name of the god, or is also an ideograph like En-ki, is again open to doubt. If Ea is the real pronunciation, then the writing of the name is a play upon the character of the deity, for it is composed of two elements that signify 'house' and 'water,'--the name thus suggesting the character and real seat of the deity. A point in favor of regarding Ea as the real name, albeit not decisive, is the frequent use of the unmistakable ideographic description of the god as En-ki. The consort of Ea who is Dam-kina also occurs in the historical texts of the first period.