128 HORMUZD RASSAM, ESQ., 
The Rev. Canon R. B. Girpiestons, M.A., says :— 
“The description of the position of Eden (Gen. ii, 8-14), is 
evidently a very ancient piece of geography. Some years ago 
Mr. H. Rawlinson read a paper on ‘ The Site of the Terrestrial 
Paradise,’ in which he discusses the passage. He suggested that 
Gan-eden (Garden of Eden) answered to the old Babylonian Gan- 
duniya, and that the four rivers of Eden answer to the four which 
are associated with Babylonia in the oldest inscriptions. If this be 
the case we must go a step further, for the Eden of the Bible is 
very high, having watershed in four directions; and we are led to 
the conclusion that the Babylonians had travelled down from a 
mountainous region to the comparative level in which they lived 
in later ages. My present business is simply to call attention to 
the antiquity of the description as we have it (in the Bible).” 
(Foundations of the Bible, p. 128.) 
Professor A. H. Saycr, D.D., writes :— 
The position of the Garden of Eden has been settled in my 
mind since the discovery (of which Mr. Rassam does not appear 
to be aware) of the fact that the plain of Babylonia is called in 
the cuneiform inscription Hdinu, from the older Akkadian edin, “a 
plain.” The “ Garden” of Hdinw was in the neighbourhood of the 
ancient city of Eridu (now Abu Shahrein). In the midst of the 
garden rose the famous world-tree, an account of which is given 
in a Babylonian poem which I have translated in my Hubber 
Lectures. 
Havilah “the sandy-land,” could never have been a designation 
of the rocky country eastward of the Tigris. Moreover its situa- 
tion is defined in the Old Testament as being in Northern 
Arabia. 
Kush may be the Kasai of the inscriptions, the Kossei of 
classical geography, who lived to the east of Babylonia. 
According to a cuneiform tablet the Euphrates in one part of 
its course was called the »44 khan, which, as I have shown in my 
Hibbert Lectures, must be read Gikhan. 
Has there been any volcanic action in Armenia during the 
quaternary period ? 
There may have been more than one Ur, though I doubt it. 
But the birthplace of Abram is defined as belonging to the Kasdim, 
and therefore in Chaldea. The name is not found in one inscrip- 
