Land of Tilmun/Dilmun.

"The first known account of a paradise garden appears on a cuneiform tablet from ancient Sumer. A place called Dilmun, a pure, clean, bright place where sickness, violence, and old age do not exist. At first this paradise lacks only one thing: water. Eventually this is provided by the Sumerian water god, Enki. At once, Dilmun is transformed into a garden of fruit trees, edible plants, and flowers. Dilmun, however, is a paradise for the gods alone and not for human beings, although Ziusudra (the Sumerian counterpart of Noah) was exceptionally admitted to the divine garden." The scholarly world first heard about Dilmun just a century ago, when scholars were able to decipher cuneiform tablets unearthed by archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in Nineveh. On other tablets found later, the scholars began reading, in literature, not only about Eden and Adam and the "lady of the rib" but also about a Great Flood, a Sumerian hero called Gilgamesh and his search for the Tree of Life. Gilgamesh had gone "down" from Sumer to the Gulf area where he had been told he would find a plant that would give him eternal life. The wedge like cuneiform was replaced by the Alphabetic writing of the Greeks, a much more efficient system. Thereby power passed from the East to the West, to Greece and Rome. The old stories, the old words, faded into obscurity because power goes to those who have it. Until the discovery of the Nineveh tablets, Assyrian cuneiform was dead. Early translators never heard of it. The name and concept of Eden were transmitted not through the Sumerian language of Dilmun but through the Hebrew-Hellenistic one of Eden." It is an accident of history, of archaeology, of translation, perhaps, that Dilmun was lost and Eden remained. It should not shake the faith of any intelligent human being. Embedded in the Bible as very ancient folk memory, not only the story of Creation but also the story of Man’s emergence from total integration with nature too dependence of perilous self-reliance, with all the man-made dangers incipient therein. There has been much speculation about Eden's location on the globe. Most likely that it is covered by the mud released by the Euphrates and Tigris during the flood and rise of the sea level with 100-120 meter. The Persian Gulf at present is twice too three times the size of these days. However other locations like Bahrain and Iran are still possible. There is what is left of the Biblical Eden and the Eden as described on different cuneiforms. Most of us have however forgotten to draw lessen and conclusions of this ancient memory. There is no need to agree or disagree but still important to know what and why.