506 



The JoiRXAL of Heredity 



dawn of history, the name for the alki- 

 vial plain of the Tij^ris and Eui)hrates 

 rivers at the head of the Persian ^ailf. 

 The Semites and Sumerians aHke used 

 it. Equally widcs]jrcad, as wc have 

 seen, was the tradition of a Tree of Life 

 at Eridu in Edin — a tradition which 

 survix'cd in tanpble form down to a 

 late da\-, throuji:h the presence of an 

 oracle-jjalm on the same spot. Now the 

 theory i)ut forward Ijy Sayce, Ilommel 

 and other orientalists is that the Biblical 

 account of the garden of Eden is derived 

 from this same tradition of venerable 

 antiquity, about the Tree of Life at 

 Eridu. 



"The garden with the tree of life in 

 the midst was planted 'in Eden east- 

 ward,' for such is the correct rendering 

 of the Hebrew text," declares Sayce, 

 "and not 'eastward in Eden' as the 

 Authorized Version has it. Not only 

 the garden, but Eden also, lay to the 

 east of the land where the writer lived — 

 The garden stood hard by Eridu, 'the 

 good city' — and thus in the very region 

 where the salt 'river' of the Persian 

 gulf was divided into its four heads" 

 mentioned" in Genesis H, 10-14. 



Not all orientalists admit that the 

 date palm of the garden in Eden at 

 Eridu was the origin of the Tree of 

 Life and Tree of Knowledge of Good and 

 Evil of Genesis; but at least there can 

 be no doubt that the date i)alm re- 

 mained an object of jjarticular venera- 

 tion to the Hebrews after they left 

 Babylonia for Palestine. It was a chief 

 motif in the decoration of Solomon's 

 temi)le, while its sacred character is 

 suggested by the fact that the prophetess 

 Deborah had her seat under a date- 

 jialm, from which, inferentially, she 

 flerived insjnration. Barton sees in the 

 Feast of the TaV)ernacles a survival of 

 an earlier Semitic feast at the time of 

 the annual date gathering. 



AMONG THE PHOENICIANS. 



Far Vx'forc this period of the Hebrew 

 kingdom, the Phoenicians possessed the 



* Hommt'l identifies the river Hiddekel of (k-nesis with Khadd Daqlah, "The Valley of Date 

 Palms" on the Arabian shore of the Persian j;;ulf ncH far south of the present mouth of the Eu- 

 ])hrates and Tigris rivers. Hiddekel is l)y most scholars taken to mean the latter of these two 

 great rivers. 



"Tisdall, W. St. C. The Original Sources of the Qur'an, i).U)4. London, PKKS. 



'" Chloroxylon sweelenia, D. C. Rutaceae. 



cult of the ]jalm, and carried it with 

 them on their trading voyages. Nu- 

 merous jjlaqucs and pieces of pottery 

 have been unearthed in France and 

 Spain, bearing date palm symbols, 

 while in a domed sepulchre at Sao 

 Martinho, Portugal, considered to date 

 from the late Stone Age, a limestone 

 cone was found identical with the burnt 

 clay cones made in Babylonia and 

 Assyria as images of the fecundating 

 spathe of the male palm. These relics 

 can be ascribed with a good deal of 

 certainty to the visits of Phoenician 

 ships in search of tin; while their in- 

 fluence in shaping the religious thought 

 and forming the myths of all the peoples 

 of the Mediterranean seems to many 

 writers to have been great. Siret has 

 elaborated this point ingeniously and 

 interestingly, but it is too far from the 

 field of genetics to warrant amplifica- 

 tion here; I need only say that he finds 

 traces of the palm cult in nearly all 

 the Grecian deities, one particularly 

 attractive conjecture being his e.\]jlana- 

 tion that the story of the visit of Zeus 

 to Danac in the form of a shower of 

 gold is merely a modification of the 

 idea of the male palm fecundating the 

 female with its shower of golden pollen. 

 The case of Leto (Latona) who gave 

 l)irlh to Apollo beside a ])alm tree in the 

 island of Dclos, is a cvirious instance of 

 the sur\'ival of the palm cult, from his 

 view])oint; and it is still more curious 

 when one recalls that the legend, slightly 

 changed, was ap]jlicd to the birth of 

 Jesus in the apocryphal "History of the 

 Nati\nty of Mary and the Infancy of 

 the Savior," which Muhammad, much 

 later, seems to have used in the Koran 

 as the source of his own account of 

 Christ's birth under the ])alm tree, and 

 the a])pearance of the angel Gabriel 

 who bid Mary eat the fresh, ri])e dates 

 to refresh her soul. Tisdall ascribes' 

 the story to an Indian origin, i^ointing 

 out the markedh' similar circumstances 

 surrotinding the birth of Buddha under 

 a satinwood '" tree, according to legend ; 



