100 HORMUZD RASSAM, ESQ., > 
The Pison, which I take to be the great Zab, was outside 
or eastward of the Tigris, as the Gihon was outside the 
Euphrates to the west, in the form of the human body ; that 
is to say, the legs answering to the Euphrates and Tigris, 
and the arms to the Gihon and Pison. The sources of the 
Pison rise in the Albae district, on the border of the Turco- 
Persian boundary, about fifty miles to the south-east of 
Lake Wan. It passes through the Assyrian and Coordistan 
mountains, and after it proceeds about 90 miles southward, 
as far as Bet Kara, a Nestorian village in Chall, it disappears. 
It then reappears near the village of Mender, in the Sharwan 
district, after having run underground for more than 30 
miles, when it proceeds on its course for 70 miles further, 
and joins the Tigris about 22 miles below Mossul.* 
Not a little discussion has taken place amongst eminent 
scholars as to the countries the rivers Pison and Gihon 
encompassed, and what was the meaning of Havilah, and 
the products that it contamed, namely, the bdellium and 
the onyx stone. Learned philologists have puzzled their 
heads from time to time to suit their imaginations by twisting 
and distorting certain words which might have had quite a 
different signification to what they thought them to be; just 
as we have now some words in the English language which 
express two and sometimes three distinct meanings. 
It is my earnest desire to try and show from personal 
observations and late discoveries where, most probably, the 
Pison and Gihon were flowing in their primitive existence, 
and why their common source is now difficult to trace. 
In entering into the controversy of the whereabouts of the 
four rivers of Paradise, their sources, positions, and directions 
must be taken into account, inasmuch as the countries 
mentioned in the sacred narrative, which they traverse, 
ought to prove in a great measure in what part of the globe 
they are to be found. 
Weare told that “the name of the third river is Hiddekel, 
that is it which goeth towards the east of Assyria”; or, as 
the revised has it, which goeth in front of Assyria. 'The words 
before and front in Hebrew and Chaldee or Aramaic, are 
represented by O73) Kdaam, or front, and in this sense it 
means neither more nor less than front or before, though 
different scholars have cavilled at the real sense, as if that 
* Tt is an interesting fact that the Nestorian Chaldeans consider the 
Zab to be the Pison, and their Patriarch dates his official letters from 
“ the bank of Pison, the river of Eden.” 
