From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

Curiously enough, it is near the locality designated by Huet and Sayce and Dawson as the site of the Garden of Eden that an age-old tradition of the Babylonian Arabs has located the Terrestrial Paradise. For it is at Kurna at the present confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris, a spot noted for its beautiful and stately date palms—trees so characteristic of southern Babylonia where its fruit has always formed the staple food of its inhabitants—that this tradition places the pristine home of Adam and Eve. Aside from any legends that might have been associated with it, its lovely palm grove must have made so strong an impression on the swarthy sons of the desert that they naturally concluded that it could have been naught else but a beautiful vestige of the original Garden of Eden where the first human pair enjoyed supreme happiness during their short life of original innocence.

The great difficulty in localizing the site of the Terrestrial Paradise has hitherto arisen from the impossibility of identifying with any degree of certainty the rivers Gehon and Phison. Assyriologists, however, are optimistic enough to believe that some document will eventually be discovered among the cuneiform inscriptions still buried beneath the ruins of ancient Babylonia that shall settle this long controverted question to the satisfaction of the most critical investigator.

But, in the absence of the tablet or monument which is to supply us with the eagerly sought information respecting these two puzzling rivers, exegetes and historians, geologists and archæologists, Assyriologists and anthropologists still continue their quest of some clue that may enable them to solve the riddle which has hitherto so completely baffled every attempt at its solution.

Among the most distinguished of recent scholars who have essayed to clear up the mystery are the German savants, E. Glaser and F. Hommel. The former, as the result of a careful study of the geographical indications given in the cuneiform inscriptions, arrives at a conclusion which, so far as it respects two of the rivers named in the Biblical account of Eden, is toto cœlo different from that of any of his predecessors in this fascinating field of inquiry. For he insists, surprising as it may seem, that the Gehon is the Wadi al-Rummah and the Phison the Wadi Dawasir which, in early post-glacial times were two great rivers that, after flowing eastward through central Arabia, became confluent with the Tigris and the Euphrates at a point near the Persian Gulf. This was, we are told, when Arabia, now a sun-parched desert, was a land of magnificent forests and luxuriant vegetation; of extensive and fertile prairies watered by frequent rains; of a temperate and equable climate—an ideal home for a people who were yet ignorant of the arts of civilized life and whose only shelter was abodes of the most primitive type. Glaser, however, agrees with those of his predecessors who locate the Garden of Eden in southern Babylonia.[481]

Professor Hommel, of Munich, goes still farther for, not content with identifying the Gehon and the Phison with the two wadis demanded by his learned compatriot’s novel theory, he contends that the Hiddikel of Genesis—usually called the Tigris—was none other than the Wady Sirhan which traverses northern Arabia and anciently emptied its waters into the Euphrates near Kufah.[482] According to this theory, the three Arabic rivers mentioned formerly discharged their waters into a shallow estuary at points not far distant from one another. This estuary has long since been replaced by the alluvial land of southern Babylonia and through it the lower bed of the Euphrates now passes on its way to the Persian Gulf. Like Huet, Sayce, Dawson, and Glaser, Hommel also teaches that the Garden of Eden must be sought in the Babylonian lowland and somewhere near the confluence of the three Arabian rivers just mentioned with the lower Euphrates.

All these eminent exegetes and men of science—and countless others might be named—are at one with Prince Caetani—justly esteemed for his contributions to our knowledge of the Near East—when he declares that the description of the Terrestrial Paradise, as given in the Sacred Text, in no wise “alludes to an imaginary place, but, on the contrary delineates with great precision a real and determinate locality in western Asia. This it does not only by naming the four rivers which arise in it but also by specifying the countries watered by them and by giving a list of their principal products.

“It is clear that the author of the Genesiac narrative had in view a place that was well known and that he took pains to describe it so minutely that there could be no doubt whatever regarding the country which he wished to indicate.”[483]

But of all the recent works which locate the site of Eden in Babylonia none has attracted more attention or produced a profounder impression than Professor Delitzsch’s masterly Wo Lag das Paradies. The fact that its author is recognized as the most eminent of contemporary Assyriologists and as one who has in lower Mesopotamia made a careful and special topographical study of the region which he designates as Gan-Eden and in which he places the Terrestrial Paradise, gives to his interpretation of the Genesiac record respecting the Garden of Eden an importance that no one can ignore. In his opinion the four rivers mentioned in the second chapter of Genesis are the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the two watercourses now known as the Shatt en-Nil, which he maintains corresponds with the Gehon, and the Pallakopas Canal which he identifies with the Phison. I refer the reader to the author’s work for his reasons for arriving at these conclusions. The interesting fact is that he agrees with the other eminent scholars above-mentioned in placing Gan-Eden—the Hebrew name for the Garden of Eden—in Southern Babylonia, although slightly farther northward than do some of the other noted workers in the same field of research. According to the interesting map, at the end of the volume, with which the learned professor has illustrated his book, Gan-Eden occupied the tract of land between Bagdad and Babylon. This is where the Tigris and the Euphrates most nearly approach each other before their final confluence much farther towards the south.[484]

Were we, then, really traversing the Garden of Eden on our way from the city of the Caliphs to the capital of Nebuchadnezzar? Tradition and legend, history, geology and Assyriology, as interpreted by the most eminent scholars of our time answer in the affirmative. Needless to say, I loved to think so. Indeed, during our entire journey through this mysterious land which has filled so large a page in the annals of our race, I thought of little else. Fancy was active. I needed only to close my eyes to surrounding realities to feel that I was literally wandering through the fragrant and mystic groves of Paradise. I was as a music lover under the spell of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or as one entranced by the sublime harmonies of Wagner’s Parsifal. Oblivious of my actual environment and indifferent, for the time being, to the theories and hypotheses of men of science respecting the site of the Terrestrial Paradise, I thought only of the simple narrative of Genesis and the pictures, based upon it, which, in my early youth, my imagination was wont to portray of the home of our first parents. I recalled Dante’s description of the beauties of the Paradise where he met his beloved Beatrice, from whom he had been so long separated and where he was made

Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars.[485]