The Garden of Eden
by Krysta CardinaleThe biblical Garden of Eden is the most enduring legend, a story found in one great civilization after another. It is story of seduction, the wrath of God, and Paradise Lost. Is there evidence that these great stories of the Bible might be true? Was there ever really such a place as Eden? The Garden of Eden is a very familiar story; a creation myth that is found in almost every society on earth. It creates a very compelling longing of people for a better world in the Garden of Eden, a type of paradise that people were and still are longing for. It creates a hope for a place that has a less complicated life, and is a reward for having worked so hard.
Today, the search for the Garden of Eden location leads to a dry and desolate land in a place called Mesopotamia. This is the land where the first seeds of human civilization were sown, and it was here that three of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world flourished; Babylon, Assyria and Sumer. Among their ruins the faithful of long sought answers to the Bible’s most profound mysteries, while archeologists scoured these lands for the historical foundations of belief. The quest for the Garden of Eden location is a journey back in time. It begins first at Babylon, the last of these lost civilizations. Then further into the past to the Assyrians, fierce masters of the art of work. Finally, the journey goes to a moment in the past so distant only Eden could have preceded it, to Sumer and the creation of civilization itself.
The discovery of the great pits at Ur was a triumph of archaeology revealing ancient secrets of the first civilization, but science alone can take us only so far. Where this trail ends, the epic of Gilgamesh provides the final tantalizing clues, clues leading us back to a garden and a place some call “Paradise.”
In the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh the name given to paradise was Dilmun. It was a place beyond the edge of normal human habitation. Dilmun was a place where everything was perfect. In Mesopotamian legend, it is a sort of Garden of Eden, a paradise, place of verdant, green and abundant water and cool winds and breezes.
The biblical Garden of Eden is a place of wonder, a perfect place, yet it is also home to a serpent. In the ancient epic, the snake steals away the flower that bestows immortality, and so like Adam, Gilgamesh must leave the garden and die. The idea of paradise seems universal, but what is it based on, was there ever really such a place? The clues point to an enchanted yet very real location, 400-miles south of the ancient Sumerian city of Ur. Here lies the island of Bahrain, a pivotal market place on the trade routes across the Arab deserts and Salts Seas of Mesopotamia. Today, Bahrain is something less than paradise, but it was once lush. This island once had an abundance of water and life, but was it paradise? By comparison to the surrounding desert, it would certainly have seemed so. There was so much water here, that what it is now a desert island bloomed. It was garden bearing lush fruit, and there were people here who apparently led a blessed life. There are more then 85,000 burial mounds that dot this landscape probably the most in any one location in the ancient world. The ancient bones tell us these people were taller and healthier, and they lived longer than anyone else in the region. In the burial mounds is one more astonishing clue, the remains of snakes, ritually embalmed at some last moment more than 4,000 years ago. Here in Bahrain we find the serpent, just as we found it in the epic of Gilgamesh and just as we found it in the Bible.
The journey back in time across the lands where the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the ancient Sumerians once walked the earth, is it possible to venture even farther to the land that conceals the very foot steps of Adam? Here faith and reason must part to company; the fact is there was once an island garden in Mesopotamia, your choice is to believe it was paradise.
