THE DESERT OF THE FLAMING SWORD

Since I have returned to England I constantly run up against people who ask me, sometimes jokingly and sometimes almost seriously, if I have brought back any sketches of the Garden of Eden, and a conversation invariably follows as to the authenticity or otherwise of the traditional site. Is it true that Mesopotamia was the cradle of the human race, and, if so, are the descriptions in the book of Genesis concerning the world known to Adam and Noah, however figuratively they may be taken, in keeping with the natural conditions of such a land? However much Paradise may have been lost, can the traveller see in Mesopotamia any signs of beauty and richness of verdure out of which the artist and the poet could visualize a garden of the Lord?

The answer, as they say in Parliament, where no one could be expected to give a downright and straightforward "yes" or "no," is in the affirmative. The scenes of these early dramas are characteristically Mesopotamian. The well-ordered garden "planted" with the tree of life "in the midst," and a river to water it, the ark of Noah pitched "within and without with pitch" as the ancient goufa is still pitched, the Tower of Babel, built with brick instead of stone and with slime (i.e. bitumen) for mortar—all these things belong to the flat, sun-baked lands of this alluvial plain. At Kurna, Arab tradition has placed Eve's Tree. It is a sorry looking, scraggy thing. It does not seem good for food, nor is it pleasant for the eyes and a tree to be desired. Another traditional Garden of Eden is at Amara, and the Eden of the Sumerian version of the story is thought by Sir William Willcocks to have been on the Euphrates between Anah and Hit.

The "planting" of the garden and certain details brought out in the short description of its features suggest very strongly the things that would occur to the mind of a writer living in an irrigated country. Milton's gorgeous backgrounds are almost entirely northern. He has striven to give it an eastern touch here and there, but such stage management consists chiefly in bringing in a few palms from the greenhouse. His description "of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides with thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild," and "of that steep savage hill," are entirely northern in feeling. The same northern wildness pervades the garden. Note the "flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art in beds and curious knots, but Nature boon poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain." In irrigation lands like Mesopotamia it is the combination of great heat and abundant water that makes for luxuriant growth. Milton conceives the most romantic and wild scenery on hill and dale and savage defile, suddenly brought into order for the use of man. The Bible story speaks only of features to be found in a land like Babylonia. Sir William Willcocks thinks that the word translated "mist" would probably be better rendered "inundation," and that the writer is speaking of a country where inundation rather than rainfall was the support of life to the vegetable world. Genesis ii. 5 and 6 would then read:

"For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

"But there went up an inundation from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground."

The description of the planting of the garden is very suggestive of a tract of bare land to which irrigation has been brought. "And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight." The garden, too, is watered, not by rainfall, but by a river which parts into different heads, as do the Tigris and Euphrates when they spread out upon the flat alluvial land below Baghdad.

Compare the "scenery" in St. John's Revelation with that of the writer of Genesis when the kings of the earth and the great men sought to hide from the wrath of God. They "hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and hide us."

Adam and Eve could hide themselves only "amongst the trees" of the garden.

The story of Noah and the flood has a very close parallel in a record of Berosus, the Babylonian priest Xisuthros had a dream in which the deity announced to him that on a certain day all men should perish in a deluge of water, and ordered him to take all the sacred writings and bury them at Sippar, the City of the Sun, then to build a ship, provide it with ample stores of food and drink and enter it with his family and his dearest friends, also animals, both birds and quadrupeds of every kind. Xisuthros did as he had been bidden. When the flood began to abate, on the third day after the rain had ceased to fall, he sent out some birds to see whether they would find any land, but the birds, having found neither food nor place to rest upon, returned to the ship. A few days later Xisuthros once more sent the birds out; but they again came back to him, this time with muddy feet. On being sent out again a third time they did not return at all. Xisuthros then knew that the land was uncovered, made an opening in the roof of the ship, and saw that it was stranded on the top of a mountain. He came out of the ship with his wife, daughter, and pilot, built an altar, and sacrificed to the gods, after which he disappeared together with them. When his companions came out to seek him they did not see him, but a voice from Heaven informed them that he had been translated among the gods to live for ever, as a reward for his piety and righteousness. The voice went on to command the survivors to return to Babylonia, unearth the sacred writings, and make them known to men. They obeyed, and, moreover, built many cities and restored Babylon.[3]

An eminent authority on the history of Mesopotamia told me that he considered the deluge to have been a purely local catastrophe in the flat land of Babylonia. The Arabs use the same word alternately for mountain or desert. If such a use has come down from long ago the extraordinary statements in Genesis vii. 20: "Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered," may be easily reconciled. It has always seemed to me that mountains which were covered by 24 feet of water must have looked very insignificant even in the flat land of Chaldea. If, however, the word "desert" will serve equally well for the word "mountain" we have an account of a flood that could easily destroy the "world" of Mesopotamia. The annual flood from which the nomadic inhabitants were used to escaping (as they do now by moving up to the higher ground) became a wide-spread inundation till the highest "desert" was covered and the population drowned.

The Biblical account of the Ark suggests to any dweller in Mesopotamia that it was a gigantic mahaila. The pitching inside and out is still practised in putting together some of the Euphrates boats, and the method of making a goufa, covering it on both sides with bitumen, has a strong family likeness to the method of boat-building used in those primitive times.

The Jew, however, was always a typical landlubber, and one would expect a specification for the building of a ship would lack nautical details. Not so, however, the Assyrian tablet relating to the Ark. It was, we are told, a true ship. It was decked in. It was well caulked in all its seams. It was handed over to a pilot. It was navigated in proper style. "I steered about the sea. The corpses drifted about like logs. I opened a port-hole.... I steered over countries which were now a terrible sea." The pilot made the land at Nizir and let her go aground.

Near Ezra's Tomb on the Tigris I saw a boat very much like Noah's ark of the toy shop, and made a scribbled sketch of it, which is reproduced on page 36.

Beside the fertile tract of country above Hit on the Euphrates—a land which has been identified as the Sumerian Garden of Eden—stretches a wild and desolate region, a place of bitumen and smoke of incrusted salt and sulphur, of rock and fiery heat—known to the Arabs as the Mouth of Hell. It guards the garden from approach by the nature of its inhospitable ground, and so I have called it, this burning wilderness, the Desert of the Flaming Sword, The town of Hit, evil smelling and grim, stands sentinel between the fertile river-bank and the ever-smoking plain.

We reached this region in a car from Felujeh, travelling through Dhibban, where we crossed the Euphrates by a bridge of boats and on to Rhamadie. Thence the track is a rough one through desert country, undulating in places and becoming rougher. Some ridges of barren hill cut off the view from time to time as we approach Hit, and we surmount one of these, obtaining a goodly prospect of the river, to plunge down again into a wilderness glittering with crystals. At first sight we might be entering the valley of diamonds of the Arabian Nights, but, alas, a close inspection shows the glittering objects to be merely pieces of rock, a sort of white marble. Then we come to mounds of curious pale earth and ground yellow with sulphur, and then, far descried beneath its black coils of smoke, the walls of Hit.

The car was boiling by this time, and owing to some breakage we had to stop, as we drew close to the town. We left the driver, however, to tinker about with the old Ford, and plunged into the wilds, Brown being particularly anxious to see what all the smoke was about.

The sun heat was still intense, and it was difficult to tell the real size of anything owing to the mirage. A sort of temple seemed to detach itself from the ground, and it was apparently floating about in an ever-changing lake. Little black men were stoking a furnace, and a river of some black substance, well banked up with earth, was flowing at our feet. I think I have seldom seen so weird a sight.

The ground is full of bitumen, and to make lime the Arabs stack up alternate stones and blocks of bitumen, setting fire to the pile. The effect of these kilns with their great columns of heavy, black smoke, writhing and coiling up into the still sky, was indescribable.

The shadow of coming night crept across the desert, turning the gold and purple of the ground to the colour of ashes. The high walls of the town still caught the sunset and glowed dull red against the darkening sky. A fringe of palms, beyond, showed where the river flowed, the river that watered the garden where the land was green and good. But the grim ramparts of Hit stretched like a line of fire between, forbidding and impassable. Higher and higher the shadows climbed till the tall minaret stood out alone, a sentinel and a flaming sword. A hundred sooty figures toiled and grovelled in the ground.

In the sweat of their faces shall they eat bread.