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htm

Genetics & Genealogy

The Secret Garden
By Peter Martin, The Sunday Times, 11 October 1998

This page was last updated on

Tuesday 15 March 2016

In the beginning, the Bible describes a fruitful paradise and an ideal man and woman.
Now archaeologist David Rohl says he has found the real Garden of Eden, in Iran. Peter
Martin joined him on a journey through Old Testament country to trace the steps of
Adam's descendants back to their original home.

After a 700 mile drive from Ahwaz in the south-west of Iran, we had come out of the
northern end of the Zagros Mountains into Azerbaijan province and down onto the
Miyandoab Plain, where barren foothills black-dotted with an occasional Bedouin tent
had suddenly given way to there's no other way to say it an earthly paradise of
large, walled gardens right and left, and a profusion of orchards heavy with every kind of
fruit. The odd cement factory and petrochemical plant aside, that is. No longer with the
road to ourselves, open trucks barrelled along, laden with apples, pears, grapes, melons,
maize cobs and bouncing tomatoes. In true-Brit celebration of our arrival, archaeologist
David Rohl and I exchanged half-daft smiles. With a fine sense of occasion, Siamak
Soofi, our interpreter, quoted a line from an ancient Persian song: "Last night I dreamt
that the sun and the moon kissed each other."

In its wonderful unlikeliness, the notion suited the moment exactly. For according to
very specific geographical references given in the book of Genesis, we had just entered
biblical Eden, with the Garden of Eden - Genesis ref: "eastward in Eden" - now all
around us and swinging away between two small mountain ranges to our right. Directly
ahead, under the far range, lay the sprawling, smog-fuzzed city of Tabriz.

"Paradise lost ?" asked Rohl. But hold on ! The Garden of Eden ? It was important not
to get carried away, of course. For one thing, there are walled gardens - Persian gardens,
with shade trees and fountains - everywhere in Iran, and nowhere in Genesis does it
suggest Adam and Eve took their ease so municipally. Secondly, Tabriz requires to be
fed. Hence the intensively worked fruitfulness of the immediate area. It's the city's
kitchen garden. But here's a strange thing: in every small town hereabouts, you see at
least one big public wall painted with a folk-art depiction of paradise, a mountain of God
with water gushing down to dense orchards and lush pastures below. Six thousand years
ago, the same icon symbolised the home of Enki, a Sumerian god and the cross-cultural
equivalent of Yahweh, God of the Old Testament. At that time, this area was known by
two names: Aratta, and the Edin.

But could this really be biblical Eden ? Take chapter two of Genesis, verses 10 to 14. It
says there that Eden encompasses the sources of four rivers: the Euphrates and the
Top
Hiddekel (Hebrew for the Tigris) - no problem with either of those - plus the Gihon and

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the Pishon. Scholars since Josephus, the 1st century Jewish historian, have argued as to
which two rivers these might be, and you won't find either, as named, on any modern
map. According to David Rohl, however, the true identities of the Gihon and Pishon
were cracked by one Reginald Walker, a little-known scholar who died 10 years ago.
Walker had published his findings in the quaintly titled Still Trowelling , newsletter
of the Ancient and Medieval History Book Club, in 1986. "But because the prevailing
wisdom even among most biblical scholars is that the Old Testament is little more than
myth," said Rohl, "nobody took him seriously."

So let's reconsider Walker's findings.

Just north-east of where Rohl and I,
with our half daft smiles, had entered
the supposed Eden, there's a river
called the Aras. But before the
Islamic invasion of the 8th century
AD, as Walker discovered, the Aras
was known as the Gaihun, equivalent
of the Hebrew Gihon. Amazingly, as
Rohl subsequently found, Victorian
dictionaries had referred to the river
as the Gihon-Aras.

So what of the fourth river rising in

the Eden of Genesis, the Pishon ?
Walker's only other local candidate was the Uizun. But again, it seems to have given up
its secret fairly easily: Pishon, according to Walker, is simply the Hebrew corruption of
Uizon, wherein labial "U" becomes labial "P", "z" becomes "sh", while "o" and "u" are
well-accepted linguistic variations. [3]

Then Walker made another discovery on one of his maps: a village called Noqdi. Could
this be a trace of the land of Nod, the place of Cain's exile after the murder of Abel ?
Noqdi's location certainly fitted the Genesis reference: "in the land of Nod, which is east
of Eden."

"Reginald Walker never came to Iran," Rohl explained, "and I do have one or two
reservations about his phonetic juggling. But, taken altogether, the possibilities were
so astonishing, I had to come and see for myself." After two research trips here, during
which he discovered additional Eden locators that fitted Genesis, Rohl is convinced.

The likeliest location of the Garden of Eden is by no means the only jaw-dropper in
Rohl's new book, Legend: the Genesis of Civilisation, published on 12th October
1998 (Century, 20). But then that's true to form. Just three years ago, in his first book
A Test of Time, then in the TV series Pharaohs and Kings, Rohl stood Egyptology
on its ear by claiming that the accepted chronology of ancient Egypt was wrong. Not
only did he present good evidence that the pharaonic chronology should be shortened by
300 years, when you apply the shorter chronology it makes for an unprecedented series
of fits between Egyptian history and Bible narratives.

In the main, academics weren't kind to Rohl's thesis. Leading Bible scholar Professor
Top
Thomas L Thompson insisted that any attempt to write history based on "a direct

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integration of biblical and extra-biblical sources is not only dubious but wholly
ludicrous." Then again, in the wake of Rohl's work, Professor Israel Finkelstein, head of
archaeology at Tel Aviv University, has already lowered the dates of Israelite
archaeology by a century.

A Test of Time began in the middle of Genesis and gave a new context to Adam's line
from Jacob and Joseph onwards. In Legend, the bold Rohl begins with Adam and Eve
and affords their immediate line a historical and archaeological place. Not all his
evidence is original. Indeed, he draws it from a stunning variety of sources and
disciplines. But Rohl's real achievement is the way in which he's pieced the evidence
together into a coherent, properly magnificent story, the first of all stories, for the first
time. He "finds" Noah in all manner of sources, puts a date on the Flood and identifies
where the Ark landed; no, it wasn't Mount Ararat - but more of that later. Thereafter, he
traces the migration of Noah's spreading line down through the Zagros Mountains into
the plain of Sumer. The Sumerians, whose high period was the 4th and 5th millennia BC,
were astonishing: inventors of writing, the wheel, metalwork, and seagoing navigation.
Then Rohl demonstrates how these people first made sea-trade contact with north
Africa, and later swept into Egypt to become the first pharaohs. Erich von Daniken's
dingbat theory of a visit from outer space notwithstanding, Legend's exposition,
accompanied by splendid photographs and illustrations, would certainly explain how
pharaonic Egypt advanced in culture so quickly.

Ahwaz, start point of our journey to Eden, is a ramshackle Klondike of an oil town south
of the Zagros Mountains. On the night before setting off, Rohl was explaining the logic
of the route. Bizarrely, or perhaps not, the hotel's only Muzak tape was a medley of
Christmas carols: "Silent Night", "The Holly and the Ivy", "While Shepherds Watched
"

Of course, we could have "done Eden", plus garden, by flying to Tabriz and jumping into
a taxi, as tourists surely will from now on. Instead, we elected to start our journey hard
by the plain of Sumer, south of the Zagros. This, so says the Bible, is the place where the
descendants of Adam settled in the period immediately following the great Flood. The
so-called "pottery trail" is good evidence of that southerly cultural migration. The oldest
pottery, 7th millennium BC, comes from north of the Zagros. The next generation of
pottery, from the 6th millennium, turns up halfway down through the Zagros. Roughly
2,000 years later, the first "modern" pottery appeared at Uruk, the second city on earth.
By then, it was being mass-produced on fast pottery wheels and was of poorer quality
than the 7th-miillenium coil-made originals. Plus a change.

Starting south of the Zagros, our self-given task was to make the journey of Adam's line
in reverse, to travel backwards in time from Sumer through the Zagros Mountains to the
first of all places: Eden. Along the way we would encounter some of the godlike
characters and ancient beliefs that inform the Old Testament, including the creation
myth of Adam and Eve.

With a 7 am start from Ahwaz, we drove through flat, boring oilfield country in the early
light, oil flares against the skyline like tall black candles with tremendous flames, as for
Old Nick's birthday. As it happened, we were following a route to Eden that was also
Top taken long ago by a royal emissary. "The world's first postman carrying the world's
first royal correspondence" is how Rohl had described him. Told on 3,500-year-old clay

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tablets indented with cuneiform script, the postman's ancient story forms part of the
epic of Enmerkar, who was a priest-king of Uruk. Our postman was the poor instrument
of a long-distance argument between Enmerkar in Uruk and the (unnamed) lord of
Aratta, Aratta being the Sumerian name for Eden. Enmerkar wanted to build a fabulous
temple in Uruk for the great Inanna, goddess of love and fertility, and he repeatedly
demanded that the lord of Aratta send him large quantities of precious metals and gems
for the job.

"The problem wasn't stinginess on the lord of Aratta's part" Rohl explained, "He was
terrified of losing Inanna forever to the cities of the plain. The god Enki had already
been removed from the mountains to Eridu, the first city on earth. Now he's going to
lose Inanna to Uruk." The royal row went on for years, with the emissary trekking back
and forth through the Zagros Mountains, three months each way. It would take us three
days.

But how does this Sumerian story tie in with that of Adam's line, post-Flood ? The first
genealogical "fix" is that Noah's son Shem appears to have been the eponymous dynastic
founder of Sumer - as the linguistic journey went: Shem, Shumer, Sumer. By extensive
analysis of ancient legends, Rohl has also demonstrated that Enki is the equivalent of
Yahweh, God of the Old Testament. On the same reckoning, Inanna is a niece, if a
culturally removed one, of the biblical Eve. Yet another "fix" is the double identity of
Enmerkar - who, again, turns out to be a well-known Old Testament figure. But let Rohl
do the unmasking:

"The 'kar' part of Enmerkar is an add-on epithet meaning 'hunter', and he is also
celebrated as the 'builder-king of Uruk'. But Genesis, too, tells of a 'mighty hunter in
the eyes of the Lord' - Nimrod, Noah's great-grandson - and credits him as the
builder-king of Erech. Same man, same city ?"

For Rohl, the clincher is in the rest of Enmerkar's name.

"Drop the 'mighty hunter' epithet, and you're left with Enmer. Now knock out the
vowels - because early Hebrew didn't record vowels - and you've got Nmr. Now knock
out Nimrod's vowels, and who have we here ?" Rohl smiled. "We can argue about that
stray 'd', if you like."

Our first stop was to see a man-made mountain of God, the ziggurat at Choga Zambil in
what was ancient Elam, just north of Sumer. A youngster as ziggurats go, it was built by
the Elamite king Untash Gal in the 2nd millennium BC. A grey desert fox trotted across
an upper terrace and disappeared. Over black tea and biscuits sweet enough to make
your dental fillings sing falsetto, produced by our Jeevesian driver, Hosien Mokhtari, we
discussed sacred mountains and why it was that Old Testament figures would ascend
one to talk to God. "You can understand their awe of mountains", said Rohl. "Imagine
it - life-giving water in the form of a spring actually coming out of the top of a
mountain. Now why would it do that unless God willed it ? A high mountain was
where God lived. So once these people had migrated from Eden down through the
Zagros here to the plain, they had to build their own mountains by way of ensuring
continuous contact with God."

Top The Choga Zambil ziggurat is a

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beauty. With a base about the size of

three football pitches, the whole
thing is girded with information:
entire courses of brick going all the
way round it, each brick indented
with still-crisp cuneiform script.
Soofi, pointing out the perfect brick
arches, gave a chauvinistic snort:
"Roman arches !" Centrally, there's
a recessed stone staircase, and at the
top there was once a "dark chamber"
to which the priest-king would
ascend to commune with a god and,
according to iconography of the
same period, to couple with a
prostitute elect. But what had this
ziggurat to do with Adam's line ?
The name game again: "Chief god of
the Elamites was Enshushinak,"
Rohl explained. "'En' is Sumerian
for 'lord'. 'Sush' is the city of Susa,
our next stop. 'Inak' we don't know,
but it might just be Enoch, Adam's
direct descendant - Enoch, lord of
Susa ?"

Back on the route of the ancient

postman, the sun was getting hot -
as in 47o hot - enough to make the
eyeballs begin to dry up on a very
short walk. "The English know how
to make these long trips, especially
old English ladies," said Soofi
fondly. "But the Spanish, the Italians ! Cut half an hour off their shopping, and they
don't speak to you any more."

Next stop: the ancient city of Susa, 3rd millennium BC, and the tomb of Daniel, he of the
lions' den. Susa, now a mound like a small South Down, was excavated by the French
Egyptologist Jacques de Morgan, in the 1890s. Justly terrified of local brigands, he built
Chateau de Morgan, the castle here - "The most impressive dig house in the world," said
Rohl, enviously. Beside Susa's mound is what Muslim's believe to be the tomb of Daniel.
"Following the Islamic invasion of 8thcentury Persia," Rohl explained, "many exotic
sites were named after Old Testament heroes, who also appear in the Koran." Daniel's
tomb or not, it's a place of affecting dignity. A mosque, the ceiling inside is a perfect
dome - a single point breaking into eight mirrored facets to form the round, then
breaking outwards again in prayer-decorated tiles to form the square base building:
Persian geometry. "In finer mosques," Soofi told us, "the dome point breaks into 16
facets, sometimes 32. The point is the infinity of God." Beneath the dome, the tomb is
Top now encased in glass and pillared silver. In the immense quiet, local people kissed the

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tomb and prayed.

Now, following our emissary's route into the foothills of the Zagros, we entered Old
Testament country - mud-brick villages, stony hills ploughed to the near-vertical, little
lone stacks of flat rocks denoting ownership of crop fields. Here and there, under a rag
sunshade, you'd see a lookout keeping a beady eye, especially for sheep going where they
shouldn't. Farmer and shepherd: the ancient enmity - Cain and Abel. In the Zagros the
only winter fuel is donkey, sheep and goat droppings, which are whacked into briquettes
and piled with conspicuous neatness, like village treasure. The country is also
dramatically lumpy with another kind of treasure. You see unexcavated occupation
mounds everywhere, the sides occasionally crumbled to reveal strata of past millennia.
Some villages are built on mounds, their history stacked beneath.

We often encountered the postman's ancient way, the wide, stony track plain to see.
Rohl said, "You have to picture him carrying Inanna's sacred standard, and her
awe-inspiring effect: 'For her, they humbly saluted with greetings like mice.' En route
to the Edin, he had to pass through seven 'gates', as in 'seven steps to heaven'. And the
order of the gates, one to seven, starting at Susa, indicates that Aratta (Eden) had the
spiritual status of heaven." Traditionally, "gates" are associated with mountain passes,
but here they're something special - spectacular river-cut mountain gorges that have
their own geological name, tangs. We got out to look at one, standing on the cliff edge,
our eyeballs drying, the serpentine Kerkeh River 200 feet below. "What tangs tell us",
said Rohl, "is that the rivers were here before the mountains rose up."

When our postman came through, he crossed his third gate, a wide tang, by walking
over Pol-e Dokhtar, the Bridge of the Daughter. Whose daughter, nobody knows. One
reconstructed arch and a few stone stanchions remain. But high above the spring
waterline, his path runs along the cliff terrace past some Neolithic caves, turns left onto
the bridge down a stone ramp on the far side, and off around another mountain.
Once, after being dictated a long message by Enmerkar, the emissary was asked to
repeat it back but couldn't remember it all: "My Lord, I am heavy of mouth." At which
point Enmerkar is credited with writing the world's first letter, on a clay tablet.

Who was Adam ? Aware that he has no hard evidence, Rohl sees him this way: "Adam is
a metaphor for the oldest ancestor in memory, the first historical man, the head of a
genealogy, a spiritual and political leader in one. He is, too, I think, the representative
of the first settled people, former hunter-gatherers, who, through the Neolithic
revolution, learnt to domesticate animals and to plant crops. Religion is a function of
settlement, of social organisation, of hierarchy, and of needing a political
leader/shaman-priest who is in touch with the gods of nature. Adam, with Eve,
probably represents an important marriage between two such settled tribes. They're
the founding family of civilisation."

"But you can 'find' these foundling characters in different ancient legends. Eve in
Genesis is described as 'the mother of all the living', the same epithet used for
Ninhursag, the Sumerian 'Mistress of the Mountain'. It looks, too, from the legends,
that Inanna is a daughter of the great mother goddess Ninhursag. But you not only
find the same characters in different legends. In the Sumerian creation myth, Enki is
cursed by Ninhursag for eating forbidden plants growing in paradise. Enki begins to
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fade away - his ribs pain him - but Ninhursag relents and creates a goddess called

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Ninti to cure him. Ninti means 'Lady of the Rib' but it also means 'Lady of Life'. It's a
Sumerian pun. But the Genesis author simply took the first meaning. And so the story
of Eve's creation from Adam's rib was born."

By 8 am next morning, after a night stop in Kermanshah, we'd come to Behistun, source
of the Kerkeh River, which we'd been following with our postman since Susa. There's a
mountain here, with a lively spring coming out of its base, and a pool with trees
curtseying into it, lilies and bulrushes. The ancients believed not only that the earth was
flat but that it floated on a freshwater, underworld ocean. Any place where water came
out of the rock was known as an abzu - the sacred entrance to and exit from the abyss.
This was once a place of Enki, lord of the underworld ocean. "Of course, there's the
motif of miraculous spring water all through the Old Testament too", said Rohl. "When
Moses and the Israelites are in the desert dying of thirst, the miracle isn't a rainstorm
or an oasis appearing. Moses strikes a rock and out comes water."

Today, the most magnificent feature at Behistun is the rock-face bas-relief of the Persian
king Darius I meting out royal justice to a whole line of uppity pretenders to his throne.
They certainly knew how to do monuments in 521 BC. The entire history of Darius,
whose empire stretched from Turkey to Egypt, is written on the rock face in three
different cuneiform scripts. But his story was lost to modern understanding until the
1830s, when an intrepid Englishman, Henry Rawlinson, spent the best part of three
years dangling from a rope at the rock face deciphering the scripts. Luckily, I'd seen a
photograph of the relief in Iranair's in-flight magazine; but it's invisible now, covered
with scaffolding and a crude planked roof, under a preservation order.

Long before Darius, there was some Palaeolithic occupation here, and the Parthian
Greeks left behind an oddly camp statue of Hercules. But now there's a roaring trunk
road too, and the pool is circled by hideous concrete. Offended, Rohl was railing about
official vandalism when the otherwise affable Soofi lost his temper, arguing that it was
the West's fault for inventing concrete, the motorcar and tourism in the first place. After
a long sulk, he brightened. "Sure, the Iran government wants tourism but has no idea
how to attract it." Then he laughed: "Our officials, they think they smell kebabs, but it's
just a donkey being branded."

Three hours on, we were way up into Kurdistan, at the summit of the highest mountain
in what Rohl believes is the biblical land of Havilah, "rich in gold and silver". There are a
couple of worked-out gold mines in the area and, a few miles on, the Gold and Silver
Rivers. We'd stopped at a caravanserai, a travellers haven-cum-fortress, now in ruins.
How crafty of Satan to have taken Jesus to a mountain top to tempt him. You feel
omnipotent here, all the world beneath you.

By late afternoon we'd come to the Throne of Solomon - another natural mountain of
god and home of Enki, but with a lake in the top and a feisty brook spilling out, source of
the Gold River. Five metres down, the lake is freezing, appropriate for an entrance to the
abyss. Now it's a place of informal pilgrimage and family recreation, kids splashing
about in inner tubes. There's also the ruin of a Zoroastrian "fire temple", possibly 1st
millennium BC, fire altar still intact. "Remember the magi ?" said Rohl. "According to
some Bible scholars, they were most likely Zoroastrian priests. By way of explaining
Jesus' famous 'missing years', one theory has him coming to this region for
Top
Zoroastrian tutelage."

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As we stood at the lakeside, sun touching the horizon, the air was cut by a singing voice,
clear and astonishing. The song, The Head of the Caravan, reckoned to have been
written in the 14th century, is played over a Tannoy here every sunset. The voice belongs
to Iran's celebrated Mohammad Resa Shajarian. "When he was 14", said Soofi, "he sang
like a divine eunuch. He's 60 now, and the lady who looks after him is, well, 17." But
the music: not four beats to a bar, as in the Spice Girls or Mozart, but 16 beats,
sometimes 32, voice and instruments flying between major and minor with no effort or
inhibition, a complexity of music of ancient memory, in which you can hear flamenco,
Indian, Chinese, Greek, Gaelic. The lake went bronze, then suddenly black. On the drive
to Takab, our night stop, Soofi sang for us until he was hoarse. Tomorrow, Eden.

Next morning, we wound down out of the mountains, through the ancient seventh gate,
and onto the Miyandoab Plain, where our emissary, " like a huge serpent prowling
about in the plain, was unopposed". His destination was the one-time city of Aratta,
which has never been found. And so we entered the supposed heart of Eden and then,
passing between Lake Urmia on our left and Mount Sahand on our right, the garden,
orchards aplenty, brash Technicolor-painted mountains of god on this wall then that,
Rohl and I smiling and gawping, Soofi relating how the sun kissed the moon, and Tabriz
up ahead.

What came next was a shock for Rohl especially. The great city walls of Aratta are
described in ancient records as being painted with red ochre. This was Rohl's third visit
to Tabriz, but he had never entered it in this quality of high-summer light before. "Look
at that," he said. The mountain directly behind the city, like no other we'd come across
in the Zagros range, is of the reddest ochre clay. It glowed red. "And Adam ?" Having
read the book of Rohl - my other, now battered travelling companion - I needed no
prompting: Adam made of clay, Adam meaning "red-earth" man in Hebrew. Every myth
must have its raw material.

In Iranian cities, since there are no pubs, clubs or trendy restaurants everyone's idea of a
glitzy night out is to go to a hotel lobby. In Tabriz, there's only one half-decent hotel, and
it was a madness of people: great assemblies of black-clad women, men shouting and
smoking like Turks, kids having pushchair races, playing football. Just 10 generations
after Adam, humanity had become similarly unruly and noisy. Which is precisely the
reason given in Genesis for Yahweh deciding to wipe out his creation. As Genesis also
tells it, none of us would be here at all were it not for one wise and devout man, the
chosen survivor, Noah, hero of the Flood.

Thus it was, in the teeming hotel lobby, that Rohl told of Noah: "A multicultural sort of
character, Noah has three other ancient identities - the Sumerian 'Ziusudra', Old
Babylonian 'Atrahasis', and the Akkadian 'Utnapishtim'. As in the story of Noah,
Utnapishtim also sends out a dove and a raven to find dry land."

And the date of the Flood ? In his book, after a truly heroic deployment of evidence -
including sliding chronologies and a review of water-laid silt strata, most notably at Ur
of the Chaldees - Rohl plots it at about 3,100 BC. But he'd reviewed a good number of
ancient flood epics - there are over 150 world-wide - before coming across the flood
record of the Meso-American Mayan culture. "The Mayan calendar - they were
exceptional record-keepers - fixes the date for their great deluge at 3,113 BC. Strange,
Top
that."

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Biblical Peoples
The different cultures and
dynasties that occupied Old
Testament country, according to
David Rohl's new chronology
3100 -
Sumerian
2100 BC
3000 -
Elamite
647 BC
2100 -
Akkadian
1920 BC
1667 -
Old Babylonian
1362 BC
1000 - 612
Assyrian
BC
625 - 539
Neo-Babylonian
BC

There is a problem with the popular idea that Noah's ark came to rest on Mount Ararat.
"The one which recent Christian explorers have been heading off to," said Rohl, "is
Mount Aregats, which was first identified as the Mountain of the Descent around the
time of Marco Polo, if only for its impressive size. Marco Polo was a notorious fibber,
anyway. But Aregats is way across in eastern Turkey, north of Lake Van." So where
might the true site be ? "In Genesis it says the ark came to rest on the mountains of
Ararat, and all the Jewish and early Christian commentaries place it in the Zagros
range in the Land of Kardu, the ancient name of Kurdistan. That's south of Lake Van
and south-west of Lake Urmia. The Babylonian priest-historian Berossus, 3rd century
BC, even tells of people removing pieces of bitumen from a ship and taking them home
as talismans. Then there's the Assyrian king Sennacherib. After campaigning in
Kurdistan around 700 BC, he worshipped a plank he'd recovered from the ark."

But which mountain is it, David ? "Well, a lot of people seem to have known - Berossus,
and the Koran mentions it, so does the 10th century Muslim writer Ibn Haukal. The
pilgrim saint Jacob of Nisibis apparently knew too It's a mountain called Judi Dagh
in the Zagros range about 100 kilometres due north of the town of Mosul. When
Sennacherib collected his sacred plank, he celebrated his visit by carving several reliefs
of himself at the foot of Judi Dagh. We also know that the 5th century Nestorian
Christians built several monasteries there, including one on the summit known as the
Cloister of the Ark." Which, taken all together, would seem to settle the matter once and
for all.

Next day, we set off to tour the supposed garden, heading "east of Eden", as directed by
Genesis. Ten miles out of Tabriz, you're in Old Testament country once more, but not
Top the stony-ground sort. There's a spacious, rural luxuriance, good sheep pasture,
dark-soiled fields, the mud-brick villages presiding on their history-packed mounds,

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with orchards and vineyards drawn close about them, and stands of poplar behind. At
the roadside, we bought grapes approaching the size of ping-pong balls.

In physical geography, this is a natural garden - a fertile plain some 60 miles wide and
200 long, enclosed between two mountain ranges, which come nearly together at the
eastern end. In Genesis, it says the garden is watered by its own unnamed river. But as
Rohl confirmed on his first visit, this plain too has its own river winding through it, the
Adji Chay. "And just a century ago," he said, "it had been known as the Meidan, which
is Persian for 'walled court' or 'enclosed garden'".

Another key reference in Genesis describes the river Gihon as winding "all through the
land of Cush". As with the four rivers of Eden, the whereabouts of Cush has been
debated for centuries, as Rohl explained. "Josephus associated Cush with the ancient
African kingdom of Kush, south of Egypt, making the Gihon the Nile, which prompted
others to hazard that the Pishon was the Indus or the Ganges. Spanning three
continents, this would have made the original Eden absurdly big."

Rohl's candidate as the

locator for the land of
Cush is Kusheh Dagh, the
Mountain of Kush. Sited
about 100 miles east
along the garden valley, it
forms part of the
northern wall. As per
Genesis, the Gihon River
winds clear through the
vicinity. The foothills are
lumped all around with
unexcavated mounds.

Between them, Walker

and Rohl appear to have
scored another direct hit
with the land of Nod,
place of Cain's exile "east of Eden". First, in order to get to the village of Noqdi, you do
indeed have to leave the garden valley via its eastern exit. Noqdi itself - standard
mud-brick, poplars, orchards - sits at the back of a valley next to an occupation mound
so big, you want to fall on it with trowels. Two old men we spoke to knew no history of
the village beyond their great-great-grandfathers' time. They had heard tell of another
town somewhere in the area, Old Noqdi, but they'd not been there.

The teasing bit is that the "i" of Noqdi means "of". A village "of" Noqd therefore implies
a larger region for Noqd. At this frustrating point on his last trip, Rohl went to the
nearby town of Ardabil, located some officials and, via them, some local maps. What he
found convinced him. "The whole area beyond the eastern exit comprises two districts:
Upper Noqd and Lower Noqd. Not to labour the point, but if Cain had gone any
further east, he'd have ended up in the Caspian Sea."
Top We headed back into Eden through Cain's exit. About the possibility of regaining

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paradise, Soofi said, "Oh, heaven's not there any more. The only way to regain it is
inside ourselves." But he had a smile coming on. "Once we had wisdom, then we settled
for knowledge, now it's mostly information. As the Koran says, 'like donkeys loaded
with books'".

On our last day, we drove a little way south of Tabriz to inspect David Rohl's nomination
for the original settlement of the Garden of Eden and Adam's own Mountain of God.
Mount Sahand has a small lake in the top, the water rising up through a one-time
volcanic chimney. A stream trickles from the summit, then flows through the Garden
into Lake Urmia.

As you approach Mount Sahand, there's a narrowish, fertile valley dominated by the
small mud-brick town of Osku, which sits on its own bulky occupation mound. "What
do you think ?" said Rohl. Yes: if you were a tribe of hunter-gatherers who'd come by a
few husbandry and farming skills, and you had scouted the whole area for he ideal spot
to settle, this would be it. It's as if the plain has lapped up into the valley and left its lush
best just here: dark earth and an extraordinary density of olive groves, fruit orchards,
walnut and almond trees. It's so comfortable besides: well-watered by the river, in the
lee of the mountain, with benign puffy-breasted hills leading down to the valley floor.
This would be a place to make home.

A few miles on, near the summit of the mountain, there's a sight to sober any western
mind cave dwellers a troglodyte village called Kandovan, which means
"honeycomb-like", after the rock-hole dwellings. The inhabitants think of this as their
mountain. Of Turkish origin, they call it Jam Daghi, Mountain of the Chalice, and hold
its cascading river to be sacred, using it for everything they need with due respect. Sole
concessions to the present millennium are a village phone line, front doors on the caves,
windows wedged in, and a corner shop selling cigarettes and sweets.

Like the Throne of Solomon, the Mountain of the Chalice is a place of pilgrimage and
recreation - and of healing. The water is said to be especially good for the kidneys.
Coachloads of schoolchildren, girls black-clad and faces covered, come for the
educational experience. There are tourists too, but the villagers appear to give no
quarter. Mercedes vs. donkey driver in a stony narrow ? Mercedes backs up. Literally
holed up above the snow line for three months of every year, Kandovans stow their
animals in cave cellars next to or under their living rooms. But they work their fertile
mountain hard and it gives back a saleable surplus: corn, fruit, nuts, seeds, herbs and
flower medicines.

The mountain has a sort of double summit: twin peaks. Certainly one, the Mountain of
the Chalice, was once a home designate of Enki. And the other ? "The 'Bright Mountain
of Inanna', I shouldn't wonder," said Rohl. Of course, he's bound to be wrong on a few
points, but that hardly matters up against the accumulated evidence of his thesis overall:
the decoding and plotting of the four named rivers of Eden; the discovery of the
unnamed river that was said to water the garden; the identification of the lands of
Havilah and Cush; and the fair certainty that the place of Cain's exile, the land of Nod, is
there still. Rohl didn't ask me the big question, but the answer is yea and verily: I do
believe I have been to the Garden of Eden.
Top Click here to view a large scale satellite image of the Garden of Eden

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References to the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis

The Book of Genesis (Greek: , "birth", "origin") or Bereishit (Hebrew:

, "in
the beginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible, and the first of five books of the
Torah, called the Pentateuch in the Christian Old Testament. Named for the Greek word
for "origins", Genesis is the "Book of Beginnings" - the beginning of the Bible, and
accounts of the beginning of the universe, earth, and its inhabitants starting with
humans.

Genesis 2

8: And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man
whom he had formed.

9: And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the
sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of
knowledge of good and evil.

10: And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and
became into four heads.

11: The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah,
where there is gold;

12: And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

13: And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole
land of Ethiopia.

14: And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of
Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15: And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and
to keep it.

Genesis 3

23: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground
from whence he was taken.

24: So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims,
and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

Genesis 4

16: And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on
the east of Eden.

The four "conclusions"

Top In Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation the author draws the four following

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conclusions:

Conclusion One: the four rivers of Genesis 10:14 are the Kezel Uizhun (Hebrew,
Pishon), the Gaihun/Aras (Hebrew, Gihon), the Tigris (Hebrew, Hiddekel) and the
Euphrates (Hebrew, Perath).

Conclusion Two: the biblical land of Cush was located in Azerbaijan whilst the land of
Havilah was located in the Iranian mountain region now known as Anguran.

Conclusion Three: the biblical Garden of Eden is to be identified with the Adji Chay
valley (formerly known as the Meidan valley) in north-west Iran at the heart of which is
the regional capital of Tabriz.

Conclusion Four: the land of Nod was located in the plain west of the Elburz
mountains around the city of Ardabil.

[3] Editor's note: Reginald Arthur Walker (1917 - 1989) in his paper "The Real Land of
Eden" published by the Ancient and Medieval History Book Club (No 11, 1986).
Walker's conclusion regarding the four great rivers of Genesis, taking them in reverse
order, is as follows:

1. the Perath (Sumerian Buranum) is the river known to the Greeks as the
Euphrates
2. the Hiddekel (Sumerian Idiglat) is the Hebrew name of the River Tigris
3. the identity of the Gihon is a little more difficult to establish but, as Walker
discovered, it is to be identified with the River Araxes
4. the Pishon is, according to Walker's arguments, the River Uizhun which rises
from several springs located near Mount Sahand (an extinct volcano east of Lake
Urmis) and the Zagros mountain massif around the Kurdish capital of Sanandaj.
It outflows into the Caspian Sea not far from the modern port of Rast. The
Uizhun is also known as the Kezel Uzun ('long gold'). There is no obvious
connection between the names Pishon and Uizhun but the geographical overview
confirms the identification.

David Rohl suggests that the Land of Eden was a vast area referred to in ancient
Sumerian texts as the Edin (literally "Plain" or "Steppe"), north of Mesopotamia beyond
the Zagros mountains. The Garden of Eden was then located in a long valley 'in the east
of Eden', to the north of Sahand volcano, near Tabriz. He cites several geographical
similarities and toponyms which he believes match the Biblical description, including
the four river headwaters of the Tigris (Hiddekel), Euphrates (Perath), Gaihun-Aras
(Gihon) and Uizun (Pishon); the mountain range of Kusheh Dagh (the land of Cush);
and Upper and Lower Noqdi (the Land of Nod).

"Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation" (1998) David M. Rohl at pages 71 to

74

Top Chapter 1

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Paradise Found

Let us bring together what we have discovered so far about the mythical land of Eden
and its paradisiacal garden.

First of all we can say with some confidence that Eden does exist - it is not a purely
mythical place deprived of a real geographical setting. Eden is located in ancient
Armenia with its heartland in the Lake Van and Lake Urmia basins. This is also the
region the Bible calls Ararat - the Assyrian Urartu. The four rivers which flow from
Eden are the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Gaihun-Aras (Gihon) and the Uizhon
(Pishon).

The Garden of Eden has also been located. It lies at the western end of the Adji Chay
valley, near the city of Tabriz. The Garden is 'in the east of Eden' and is protected on
its north, east and south sides by the mountain peaks of the Savalan and Sahand
Top
ranges. To the west are the treacherous marshlands of the Adji Chay delta stretching
out into Lake Urmia. The Adji Chay has an older name - the Meidan - which means

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'walled-garden' - this is the river, described in Genesis 2:10, which waters the Garden
of Eden.

To the east of the Garden the valley gradually ascends to a mountain pass which is
the eastern gateway into Eden. Beyond, in the Ardabil basin, lies the land of Nod -
the destination of Cain's exile. Several villages in this area still hold a dim memory of
the ancient biblical toponym in their modern names. At the outflow of the pass
leading from the south and east into Nod, and therefore beyond to Eden, stands the
town of Kheruabad - the 'settlement of the Kheru' - a name which may provide a link
to the ferocious winged guardians of the eastern gateway into Eden. The Bible calls
them the Kerubim - the Cherubs.

To the north of the valley of the Garden lies the 'Mountain of Kush' (Kisheh Dagh)
and, beyond, the biblical land of Cush. Through Cush flows the Gihon river,
identified with the mighty Araxes river which was called the Gaihun at the time of the
Islamic invasions of Persia.

To the south of the Garden, beyond the Sahand and Bazgush mountain ranges, lies
the land of Havilah 'rich in gold'. This is the Iranian province of Anguran stretching
from the Talesh mountains in the east to the Miyandoab plain in the west. This
mountainous region is watered by numerous fast-flowing streams which cascade
down from the volcanic peaks and gather together into the meandering Kezel Uzun
river - the biblical Pishon which 'winds all through the land of Havilah'. The district
of Anguran is renowned for its mineral wealth just as Havilah was renowned for its
gold and semi-precious stones. And one other incredibly rare stone is found here
which is going to play a part in our story - lapis lazuli (the 'blue stone' of gods and
kings).

We seem to be doing pretty well in our search for the origins of the Genesis story -
especially considering that any attempts to locate Eden are doomed to failure in the
view of most academics. Walker's topographical discoveries have uncovered the
physical geography of the Edenic legends, but is there more to unearth from sources
outside the Judaeo-Christian tradition ?

So far we have been concentrating predominantly on Chapter Two of Genesis and the
geography of modern western Iran. I think we have probably learnt as much as we
can from the biblical record. Now it is time to turn to the extra-biblical sources - in
particular the epic literature of the Sumerians, the foremost of ancient world
civilisations.

What we find is rather interesting. The Sumerians do refer to a mystical land beyond
the mountains - but it is not called Eden. The Sumerian paradise is the kingdom of
Aratta, rich in gold, silver, lapis lazuli and building stone. We will learn that it is the
place where gods originated, the 'Land of the Living' and the far-off world to which
the archetypal Sumerian hero journeys to seek his destiny.

Top "From Eden to Exile" (2002) David M. Rohl at pages 21 to 29

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Chapter One

Adam and the Garden of Eden

Genesis 2:8 to Genesis 4:16

In the beginning - the beginning of memory - there was once a luxuriant land called
Eden with a paradisal garden set towards its eastern limits. Eden lay beyond the
broad mountain range which separates the Mesopotamian plain from the steppes of
central Asia, its heartland located in the area of the two great salt lakes of Van and
Urumiya. The lush primeval valleys and plains of eden were hemmed in by tall
snowcapped peaks, their slopes covered in a dense canopy of pine (erini) and cedar
survan) forest. Later, the Persians would simply know the place as pairidaeza -
Paradise.

Four of the ancient world's great rivers flowed from Eden. The headwaters of the
Hiddekel (Tigris) and Perath (Euphrates) were located in the west, whilst those of the
Gihon (Gaihun-Aras), flowing through the land of Havilah, rose in its eastern part.

Eden was the place which gave birth to civilisation - the womb of the great earth-
goddess and the mother of the Neolithic Revolution. This was the time when Stone
Age Man finally gave up the wandering hunter-gatherer way of life, settled in villages
and began to raise crops and domestic animals.
Top
Located in the eastern part of the sparsely populated region of Eden was a long

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east-west valley, protected by high mountains on three sides. The sun rose at one end
and set at the other. To the north stretched the Mountains of Cush beyond which lay
the land of the same name, through which flowed the River Gihon. At its eastern end,
the range culminated in the rocky volcaniv pinnacle of Mount Savalan, guarding the
eastern entrance into Eden. To the south the snow-topped Bazgush ridge separated
the valley from the Land of Havilah with its fast flowing streams, rich in gold, which
joined to form the meandering River Pishon. At the western end of this southern
range rose the mountain massif of Sahand - an icy world of glistening volcanic peaks.
The valley was bounded on its west side by salty Lake Urumiya beyond a broad area
of inhospitable marshland and salt flats.

It was here in this lush valley 'in the east of Eden' [Genesis 2:8] that Adam and his
people settled. The epic story of the Children of Yahweh begins here in this first of all
gardens - the Bible's Earthly paradise.

The 'garden' (Hebrew gan) into which the Adamites had arrived was sheltered on
three sides - a haven from the worst of the highland climate and a refuge from
nomadic bands moving through the surrounding mountains along the major
communication routes. Westerly winds brought warm rain from the Mediterranean,
creating a micro-climate in the long narrow valley. This extra moisture encouraged
dense vegetation growth and an amazing variety of fruit-bearing tress 'enticing to
look at and good to eat' [Genesis 2:9]. In deep red soil covering the foothills, orchards
of apple, apricot, pistachio and almond grew in abundance. Intermingled with the
fruit- and nut-bearing trees, wild vines entwined the natural sloping terraces, heavily
laden with bunches of sweet green grapes. The vine was the Tree of Life at the heart
of Eden.

Scattered across the valley floor Adam's people found bubbling hot springs which
watered meadows carpeted in wild flowers. And through the centre of this idyll
flowed a river, the numerous sources of which originated atop the summits of the
surrounding peaks. The river of the Garden flowed westwards before disgorging into
the swapms of Urumiya. Today this river is called the Adji Chay - the 'bitter waters' -
because of the high mineral content washed down from the metal-rich mountains. Its
more ancient name was Maidan, meaning 'Royal Garden'.

Here was a place that had everything. Adam and his followers established their roots
in this virginal landscape - the legendary Garden of Eden.

Top

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The Red Earth Man

Adam was both the ruler and high priest of his community. He was in tune with the
voices of nature which spoke to him in vision and trance. Adam knew the power of
the plants and the animals.

He was also well aware of the harsh realities of life and its inevitable end. The great
MOTHER EARTH regularly took back the bodies of the creatures she had created,
leaving only bleached bones as witness to their brief existence. Earth to earth, dust to
dust - or, more correctly, clay to clay [Genesis 3:19]. Just as the potter produced
vessels on his potter's wheel, so the gods (Hebrew elohim, Sumerian igigi) made Man
in their likeness from the clay of Mother Earth on a ptter's wheel.

The gods (elohim) said, 'Let us make Man in our own image, in the likeness of
ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish and the sea, the birds of heaven, the
cattle, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that creep along the ground.'
[Genesis 1:26]

They (the gods) summoned the goddess, the midwife of the gods, wise Mami
('mummy' = Ninhursag), and asked: 'You are the womb-goddess, creator of Mankind!
Create a mortal, that he may bear the yoke!' Enki ('Lord of the Earth') made his
voice heard and spoke to the great gods: ' Then one god should be slaughtered
NINTU ('Lady of Birth') shall mix clay with his flesh and blood. Then God and Man
shall be mixed together in clay'. [Atrahasis Epic 1:4]

Yahweh shaped Man from the clay of the ground and blew the breath of life into his
nostrils, and Man became a living being. Yahweh planted a garden in the east of Eden
Top
and there he put the man he had fashioned. [Genesis 2:7-8]

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Yahweh took the man and settled him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and take
care of it. [Genesis 2:15]

In the creation mythology of ancient Mesopotamia Man was made in the likeness of
the gods by combining the clay of the earth with the blood of a sacrificed god. So it
was that Adam received his own traditional name meaning 'red earth' - the red earth
or clay taken from the Red Mountain overlooking the Garden. Excavations in Eden
have revealed that red ochre was used to paint the walls of the houses, decorate clay
figurines and cover the bones of the dead as 'replacement blood' or as a substitute for
the flesh stripped from the bones by carrion [1]. Adam knew the earth because he
was of the earth.

Mountain of God

To the south of the settlement a narrow, steep-sided valley rose up in the direction of
the most prominent mountain at the western end of the Garden.The great
snow-covered dome of the mountain towered above the orchards, its summit often
shrouded in clouds. One day Adam decided to follow the stream up the valley. The
fast-flowing brook, charged with ice-cold waters from the spring thaw, led him higher
and higher until he found himself within sight of the montain top. There, immersed
in the clouds, the landscape began to take on a supernatural form.

The fruit-bearing trees, heavy with blossom, had dwindled away soon after Adam had
begun his climb. He had then crossed a barren moorland which spread out before the
mountain. Following a bend in the gorge, made by the fast flowing stream, he was
now confronted by an amazing sight. The source of the stream was a shimmering
pool, bubbling with hot gases. Enclosing the spring were conical towers of volcanic
tephra [2]. The reflection of these huge molars appeared as a gaping jaw in the water,
at the centre of which lurked utter darkness. Above this entrance into the underworld
the icy dome of the mountain stood sentinel.

Just as with Abraham and Moses, thousands of years later, Adam first came face to
face with his god here in this 'high place' above the Garden of Eden. This was a
crucial turning point in Man's journey through time; the moment which transformed
Adam - the red earth man - into the genealogical fount of Judaeo, Christian and
Islamic lineage. It was what distinguished the great ancestor of Yahweh's children
from all who had gone before him. Here, and at this moment, the age of the Mother
Goddess gave way to the era of the Lord of the Earth - the god recognised throughout
the ensuing primeval age as the 'Friend of Man'.

Later tradition (in the form of the books of Ezekiel and Isaiah) would refer to a
mysterious 'mountain of God', the 'exalted throne' and the 'mountain of the assembly
(or heavenly host)'. By the time of the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah, this holy
mountain lay 'far away to the north' of Israel [Isaiah 14:13]. It became synonymous
with the place of Man's fall. From these heights humanity (in its manifestation as the
Phoenician King of Tyre) fell from grace to suffer mortal existence, forever beyond
the protection of the Eartly paradise.

Son of Man, raise a lament for the King of Tyre. Say to him 'The Lord Yahweh says
Top this: "You were in Eden, in the Garden of God you were upon the holy Mountain of

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God, where you walked amongst the red hot coals I have cast you down from the
Mountain of God and destroyed you Of the nations, all who know you are stunned
at your fate. You are an object of terror gone forever." [Ezekiel 28:11-19]

The primitive, innocent world came to an end with Adam. The symbolic metaphor of
the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the incident of the Temptation mark the
second crucial turning point in Adam's lifetime when Man began to seek the
unknown. That all too human quest for knowledge became the 'mortal sin' which
ignited Mortal Man's struggle and suffering in the descendants of primeval Adam.
Our story of the Children of Yahweh really begins with that first step beyond the
domain of the sacred mountain and its fabulous garden, the descent or 'fall' from
heaven and the ceasless wanderings which culminated in bondage on the banks of
the River Nile over three and a half thousand years later.

The Mountain of God is still there to this day. You will find it marked on maps of
western Iran as the 3,700 metre (10,500 ft) mountain massif of Sahand. The sacred
pool - the primeval and original 'abyss' (Sumerian abzu) - has gone, as have the
'red-hot coals'. But, if you climb Sahand today, following in Adam's footsteps, you
will come across the ancient troglodyte village of Kandovan, hewn out of the old
volcanic towers beside the bubbling spring. Time stands still in this place where
humanity first communicated with the god of the Bible.

A Marriage Made in Heaven

Not long after the establishment of their village at the foot of Mount Sahand, the
Adamites came into contact with other people settled in the region. To the south,
beyond the Mountain of God in Eden, lay the Land of Havilah, 'rich in gold', where
the Huwawa tribe lived. The chieftain of that tribe had a daughter - a priestess of the
goddess Ninhursag - the 'mistress of the mountain peaks' and the 'mother of all the
living' - whom he now offered in marriage to Adam. The union of Adam and Eve
(Hebrew Hawwah) produced three sons and several daughters. In the biblical
tradition Eve was given the epithet 'mother of all the living' because of her role as the
great female ancetsor of the Hebrew line. But there was also a ritual significance to
this epithet. Adam, chieftain of the Eden clan, and Eve, priestess of the birth-goddess
of Havilah, performed the annual union of the Sacred Marriage in which Eve took on
the persona of the great Mother Goddess. Three thousand years later, Adam's
successor rulers would still be practising this most ancient sexual rite in the 'dark
chambers' atop the great ziggurats of Mesopotamia so as to create an heir to the
sacred throne and ensure the fertility of the land at the birth of each year.

The first-born of Eve's sons was CAIN, followed by ABEL his younger brother by
three years. The two boys grew up together, learning not only to domesticate wild
sheep, goats and cattle, but also to cultivate the land. In adulthood, Cain became a
farmer whilst Abel took to shepherding in the hills. Their contrasting and conflicting
ways of life - the tilling of soil versus pastoralism - would eventually be responsible
for a great tragedy, shattering the unity of the village and leading to the exile of one
group from Eden. This conflict between sedentary farming and nomadic pastoralism
still simmers in the Iranian highlands today - the eternal curse of Cain and Abel.
Top Notes

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[1] Primitive man most likely daubed his skin with ochre to ward off insects. In the
valley of the Garden the swarms of mosquitoes which bred in the marshes of the
great lake were a constant irritant, but the tribe soon learnt that red ochre was an
effective insect repellant.

[2] Editor's note: 'Tephra' (derived from the Greek word for "ash") is fragmental
material produced by a volcanic eruption regardless of composition, fragment size or
emplacement mechanism.

References

1. Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation, David M. Rohl (1998) Chapter 1 at

pages 43 to 74
2. From Eden to Exile, David M. Rohl (2002) Chapter 1 at pages 21 to 29

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