84 HORMUZD RASSAM, ESQ., 
of the Bible, and school books, follow certain mistaken and 
doubtful conjectures just because certain literary men and 
scholars of note have entertained new notions in their 
minds, it becomes rather serious and misleading to those who 
have not studied the subject well, especially in regard to 
known geographical positions. 
From time immemorial the site of Eden, or Paradise, has 
been disputed, argued, and speculated upon without a 
tangible result; but of late years it has been almost unhesi- 
tatingly believed that not only the Garden of Eden but the 
supposed lost two sacred rivers, the Pison and the Gthon, 
have been identified in a certain locality in Southern Meso- 
potamia ! 
There have been so many errors committed by emiment 
scholars in their theories about ancient histories, that I now 
feel quite reluctant to believe mere conjectures and_pro- 
blematic geographical positions in connexion with Biblical 
lands. i 
Whether in the Encyclopedia Britannica, Smith’s Dictionary 
of the Bible, or the commentaries, the site of Sepharvaim or 
Sippara is put down at Mosayib, a town on the right bank of 
the Euphrates, on the way from Baghdad to Karbela, and 
about 30 miles above Babylon, whereas I discovered it, in 
1881, 30 miles further north, about five hours’ journey to 
the south-west of Baghdad. 
The mound, now called by the Arabs Babel, on the 
northern limit of Babylon, was also fixed upon as the site of 
the temple of Belus, but I have fuund it to be that of the 
hanging gardens. ms 
No one who knows anything about the structures of 
Assyrian and Babylonian palaces and temples would think 
for one moment of fixing on Mosayib as the site of Sippara, 
because in both of those ancient kingdoms no palace or 
temple was ever erected excepting on artificial mounds, of 
which Mosayib is destitute for miles around. 
The land and nationality of Abraham have also been un- 
compromisingly disputed from time immemorial, but now we 
are assured, on mere conjecture, of the very spot in Southern 
Babylonia—that is to say, in the supposed Babylonian site 
of the Garden of Eden, where he was born and brought up, 
because, forsooth, an inscription was found in a mound in 
the outskirts of the Arabian desert, called Mackayir, or 
Magayir, in which then ame of a city of Uri, or Uru, exists. 
This has been construed by some Assyrian scholars to mean 
the exact Ur of the Chaldees out of which Abraham was 
