Lecture VI. Cosmologies. 353
That there is a connection between the Biblical story and
the Babylonian legend is, however, rendered certain by the
geography of the Biblical Paradise. It was a garden in the
land of Eden, and Edin was the Sumerian name of the“plain”of
Babylonia in which Eridu stood. Two of the rivers which watered
it were the Tigris and Euphrates, the two streams, in fact, which
we are specially told had been created and named by Ea at the
beginning of time. Indeed, the name that is given to the Tigris
in the Book of Genesis is its old Sumerian title, which survived
in later days only in the religious literature. Even the strange
statement that“a river went out of Eden,”which“was parted and
became into four heads,”is explained by the cuneiform texts.
The Persian Gulf was called“the Salt River,”and, thanks to
its tides, was regarded as the source of the four streams which
flowed into it from their“heads”or springs in the north. On
early Babylonian seals, Ea, the god of the sea, is depicted as
pouring sometimes the four rivers, sometimes only the Tigris and
Euphrates, from a vase that he holds in his hands. Years ago I
drew attention to a Sumerian hymn in which reference is made
to the garden and sacred tree of Eridu, the Babylonian Paradise
in the plain of Eden. Dr. Pinches has since discovered the last [386]
line of the hymn, in which the picture is completed by a mention
of the rivers which watered the garden on either side. It is thus
that the text reads—
“In Eridu a vine^305 grew over-shadowing; in a holy place
was it brought forth;
its root was of bright lapis, set in the world beneath.
The path of Ea was in Eridu,^306 teeming with fertility.
His seat (there) is the centre of the earth;
his couch is the bed of the primeval mother.^307(^305) Perhaps Hommel is right in translating“palm.”
(^306) Cp. Gen. iii. 8.
(^307) Zikum or Nammu, the abyss, who is called the mother of Ea. Nammu is
given as the Sumerian name or title of Zikum inCuneiform Texts, xii. p. 26, 1.