Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

Nile is the only river in the world that flows south-to-north. Ptolemaic 
cartographer had every reason to assume that Nile is like any other river, 
flowing north-to-south, and so (looking at the map) that it splits into four 
(splitting in the direction of its flow), not joined from the four.

Tanakh has only one Cush, populated by blacks. Cush, son of Ham.

Vadim Cherny

> First, what does the text actually say?  It says there was
> one river that flowed through Eden which then split up into
> four rivers.  This is opposite the situation with Nile
> where many rivers, including four bearing the name Nile
> come together, not split apart.  Nor does it occur in
> Mesopotamia, or indeed anywhere in the world.   This was
> discussed in some detail a few months ago in May.
>
> While it is true that KW# is applied to Ethopia however it
> also applies to at least two other locales, southern Arabia
> and the land of the Kassites.   Dr. Head made a very
> interesting presentation of this in May thread.

HH: There may be more than one Cush in the Bible.
The one in Genesis may be an Asian Cush, not the
African Cush. Here is the HAL entry for the word: