Table of Contents
The Euphrates runs through more of this site than almost any other river. It waters the garden in Genesis, it was dug out by the gods in Atrahasis, the flood hero lived on its banks, and Babylon fell when its course was turned. I followed the river through the pages and collected what each one says about it.
A river of Eden
Genesis names it last of the four rivers that flow out of the garden. The verse is on Genesis 2:
And the fourth river is Euphrates.
Genesis 2:14 (KJV)
There were many gardens of Eden gathers the many places writers have put the garden. Bashar, speaking through Darryl Anka, describes several gardens on Earth and names one of them as the main one:
but one of the main ones was in what you call the area of the Middle East, in that area near the Euphrates River. And therefore that was considered the original garden.
Bashar, through Darryl Anka
Adam and The Adam Race follow the same line, with the Anunnaki laboratory in Eden near the Euphrates. On The Pyramid, the Cross and the Garden of Eden, Donnelly quotes Josephus, who has the Euphrates and Tigris running down into the Red Sea.
Dug by the gods
The Mesopotamian texts make the river a work of the gods. In Atrahasis the junior gods do the digging. They dig the bed of the Tigris, and then the Euphrates. I do not reprint a modern English of those lines. Stephanie Dalley’s 1989 translation is in copyright, and I have no printed page number for them.
Mesopotamian creation myths gives the work to Enki: in “The Debate between Bird and Fish” there is no water for people to drink until Enki creates the Tigris and Euphrates and lets water flow into them from the mountains. In the video The Elohim made us work in their Gan Eden, the gods lay the banks of the rivers before they ask what should be done next. Which Deities Are Linked to Fish and Water? treats Dagan as a grain and fertility god of the middle Euphrates, and Lilith sets the huluppu tree, where Lilith built her house, on its banks.
The flood on the Euphrates
The flood hero lived on the river. Utnapishtim, Ziusudra and Noah calls him a man of Shuruppak on the Euphrates, and Donnelly quotes the tablet on The Deluge of the Chaldeans:
The town of Shurippak, a town which thou knowest, is situated on the Euphrates--it was ancient, and in it [men did not honor] the gods.
The Chaldean flood tablet, quoted by Ignatius Donnelly
Donnelly adds that a river setting proves nothing, since almost every nation had its own mountain where the ark came to rest. The ground tells its own story. Excavations in southern Mesopotamia have uncovered flood deposits describes how the Tigris and Euphrates often flooded when they changed course, and Events around 3,100 BCE linked to a meteor impact? describes settlements in lower Mesopotamia buried under a three-meter-thick layer of mud.
Cities on its banks
Sumer, the first known civilization places the first civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates. Babylon’s connection with Atlantis tells the end of its most famous city: Herodotus describes how Cyrus diverted the Euphrates so his troops could enter Babylon, and Strabo blames the city’s decline partly on the shifting of the river.
The river may also hold a king. The video Tomb of The Giant Gilgamesh Discovered! reports a 2003 survey that found what looked like a burial chamber beneath the former Euphrates, close to the descriptions of Gilgamesh’s tomb in the ancient texts.
Related pages
- Genesis 2
- There were many gardens of Eden
- Atrahasis
- Mesopotamian creation myths
- Utnapishtim, Ziusudra and Noah
- The Deluge of the Chaldeans
- Babylon’s connection with Atlantis
- Excavations in southern Mesopotamia have uncovered flood deposits
For every page I tagged with Euphrates, see the Euphrates tag archive.
