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MRS. WALTEK MAUNDEBj OX ASTRONOMICAL 



descend. And the west wind is named the diminished, because 

 there all the luminaries of the heaven wane and go down. And the 

 fourth wind, named the north, is divided into three parts : the first 

 of them is for the dwelling of men. and the second contains seas 

 of water, and the abysses and forests and rivers, and darkness and 

 clouds ; and the third part contains the garden of righteousness." — 

 (Eth. En., LXXVIL 1-3.) 



Here we have the Iranian tradition of a threefold division 

 of the north : " the dwelling of men " or the northern earth, the 

 part containing " the abysses and darkness " or the northern 

 hell, and the part containing "the garden of righteousness" or the 

 northern heaven. From this passage alone, it is not clear how 

 Pseudo-Enoch considered that these three divisions were dis- 

 posed with regard to each other ; — whether they constituted three 

 divisions on the earth's surface, all co-pbmar, or whether, as with 

 the Magi, they each occupied a plane,— heaven in the upper sky, 

 hell hanging down into the abyss, and earth lying in between ; 

 all three planes joining on the northern horizon. 



The Garden of Righteousness is in the north ; the passage 

 just quoted leaves no room for doubt on that score. But we 

 have the same Book of Genesis before us that Pseudo-Enoch 

 had, and that describe* very particularly the garden as ' : east- 

 ward in Eden," and again, even more precisely, by the fact that 

 "a river went out of Eden . . . and from thence it was 

 parted, and became four heads," of which two were the Tigris 

 and Euphrates. Scholars are not agreed as to whether the 

 parting into " four heads " means the sources or the mouths 

 of the river, that is whether Eden was situated among the 

 mountains of Armenia or on the Persian Gulf, but the 

 difference between these two localities is barely 10° of latitude ; 

 no such difference of opinion could justify anyone in placing 

 it 50° or 60° to the north, within the polar regions. To Slav. 

 En., in Alexandria or Little Paissia, the Garden of Eden was 

 still to his east, but to Eth. En., in Parthia or Media, the 

 Euphrates and Tigris lay due west. Slav. En. had the crystal 

 spheres of Ptolemy to aid his conception and he solved the 

 difficulty by making a window in his third heaven open to the 

 Garden of Eden in the east. But for Eth. En. there was no 

 such way out. 



The Illrd Section of Eth. En. is not the only one that refers 

 to the Garden of PJghteousness, and in terms that leave no 

 doubt that it is northerly. In the 1st, Ilnd, and IV th Sections, 

 there is such a blending of Magian and Jewish traditions 

 on this point, that if we put it all down to the credit of the 



