402 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
cataracts were such as we see on the Nile, and water could be led 
off from above a rapid and utilized for irrigating, with free flow, 
gardens situated a little downstream and above the reach of the 
highest floods. Such was the Garden of Eden, and its site must 
have been near an outcrop of hard rock like we see at Anah, where, 
in coming down the river, we first meet the date palm, which even 
to-day is a tree of life to the whole Arab world. 
Below Hit no place can be found for a garden without lifting 
apparatus and protective dikes, because otherwise any garden irri- 
gated in the time of low supply would be inundated in flood, and if 
irrigated in flood would be left high and dry in the time of low 
supply. 
Downstream of the garden the river was parted and became four 
heads. The first was Pison, represented to-day by the many-armed 
depressions of Habbania and Abu Dibis between Ramadi and Nejef, 
which are not inaptly described, from the point of view of a dweller 
in Babylonia, as encompassing the whole land of Havilah which lay 
between the frontier of Egypt and Assyria. 
The second river was Gihon, the modern Hindia, the Chebar of 
Ezekiel, who lies buried on its banks, the Ahava of Ezra, the Palla- 
copus of Alexander, and the Nahr Kufa of the early khalifs. It is 
represented as encompassing the whole land of Kis or Kutha or Cush, 
the father of Nimrod, the beginning of whose kingdom was Erech 
and Akkad and Calneh and Babylon. The ancient town of Kutha 
lay on the Nahr Kutha, which was in all probability the main stream 
of the Euphrates in the earliest times, and on whose banks were 
situated Kutha, Nil, Niffur, EKrech, and Tel Senkere, which date 
from days long prior to Babylon, the capital of Khammurabi, 
founded on the Babylonian branch when the other had silted up. 
The third river was Hiddekel, the modern Sakhlawia branch, some 
250 feet wide and 25 feet deep to-day, running like a mill race into 
the wide Akkar Kuf depression, and flowing out of it into the Tigris 
at Bagdad. If let alone, the Sakhlawia would be capable of carry- 
ing more than half the waters of the Euphrates, and rendering the 
country between the two rivers uncultivable. In ancient times it was 
undoubtedly a second head to the Tigris, and from the point of view 
of a dweller in Babylonia, it was accurately described as “that it is 
that goeth in front of Assyria.” 
And the fourth river was Euphrates. No definition was necessary. 
It was the river of Babylon itself. 
Just as the Babylonian colonists carried the name Tigris with 
them to Nineveh, so doubtless, in times after the most ancient, they 
gave the name of the river of Babylon to the great stream on whose 
banks was situated the cradle of the race. From source to mouth one 
river became the Euphrates, and the other the Tigris. 
