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“ compassetli tlie whole land of Ethiopia,” or Cush, and which 
gave a handle to sceptics to doubt the Word of God. As Cush 
was only known to historians to mean Ethiopia, and that 
Ethiopia was in Africa, they thought, therefore, that it was 
beyond a man’s comprehension to understand how a river, 
supposed to have sprung from the Assyrian or Armenian 
mountains, could run round Ethiopia, crossing the Arabian 
desert, passing through Egypt, and ascending mountains two 
and three thousand feet high ! Here, again, scepticism has 
been defeated by the discovery of a cuneiform terra-cotta tablet, 
on which another Cush is mentioned as having been known 
to the ancients to exist in Cappadocia in Asia Minor. This 
tablet, which is in the British Museum, has been read by 
Mr. Pinches, and the following is the substance of his remarks 
upon it : — 
“The question of the situation of the land of Kusaa, as 
well as that of the form of the name when used to denote the 
country itself, seems to be set at rest by one of the tablets 
from which the above list of names of towns is taken. This 
tablet, which is the first published on plate 53 of the work 
above referred to,* contains, in the second column of the 
obverse, the names of the cities and countries in the neighbour- 
hood of the Taurus range of mountains, and includes (1. 1 3) 
the land of the Kusu. It is evident, therefore, from the con- 
nexion in which it occurs, that we are to understand by this 
Cappadocia, and not Ethiopia. This identification sheds at 
once a new light on two important passages in the Book of 
Genesis, the first of which is in chapter ii., v. 3, where the 
river Gihon, which ‘ encompasseth the whole land of Cush/ is 
mentioned ; andthe other in chapter x., v. 8, where is recorded 
the fact that Cush begat Nimrod. Now, in both these passages 
it has been supposed by some scholars that the land of Cush 
here mentioned is the same as Ethiopia ; but it seems to be 
much better to identify it in both cases with Cappadocia s 
The question of the position of Paradise is also connected 
with these identifications, on account of the removal of the 
river Gihon up thither. 
“Another most interesting matter is the double name 
system thus brought to light : the Musri of the Black Obelisk 
(a tribe to the north of Assyria), and the Musri in Egypt, the 
Cush Cappadocia and the Cush Ethiopia, the Makan and 
Meluhha in Babylonia, and the districts of the same name in 
Egypt, all pointing to a connexion in the minds of the people 
* The second volume of the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. 
