“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Genesis 2:8). As you can read on this website, Dora Jane Hamblin writes, “where, if indeed it existed as a geographically specific place, was the Garden of Eden? Theologians, historians, ordinary inquisitive people and men of science have tried for centuries to figure it out.”

Detail of Adam and Eve and the four rivers from the Psalter world map. Map by Pierre Mortier made in 1700–he places the Garden of Eden in ancient Sumer and also has included the island of Ikaros (Failaka). Depiction of paradise from a 17th century Armenian manuscript

In her lecture series Ancient Mesopotamia: Life in the Cradle of Civilization, Amanda Podany tells us that, “around 2500 BCE, Ur-Nanshe founded a dynasty that ruled the city-state of Lagash in southern Mesopotamia. Lagash was rich because it was located on a trade route that led to the powerful land of Susa. The Relief of Ur-Nanshe [discovered in 1888 at Tello/Girsu in Iraq] mentions that boats from distant Dilmun carried the wood for Ur-Nanshe to build a temple. This is the earliest mention of the land of Dilmun.”

In recent years, scholars have begun to associate the ancient Dilmun civilization, based on modern-day Bahrain and Failaka Island, with the Garden of Eden. In his lecture series The History and Archaeology of the Bible, Jean-Pierre Isbouts states that, “some think ‘Eden’ is associated with the legend of Dilmun that circulated in Sumer… Dilmun is sometimes identified as today’s Bahrain. The Garden of Eden was everything that the desert was not.” In this LA times article, Jane Moon is quoted as saying, “fresh water just bubbled up out of the ground [at Saar, Bahrain]… that must have been miraculous to Gulf people.”

But as Paul Lewis explains in his 1984 New York Times article Eden on the Isle of Bahrain, for millennia, “the name of Dilmun had vanished from the collective memory of mankind.” That was, until, the decipherment of cuneiform. In his lecture series Archaeology: An Introduction to the World’s Greatest Sites, Eric Cline describes cuneiform as a wedge shaped writing system used to write Akkadian, Babylonian, Hittite, Old Persian, and other languages in the ancient Near East (much as we now use the Latin alphabet to write English, French, German, Italian). In mid 19th century, the British scholar Sir Henry Rawlinson cracked cuneiform by translating the tri-lingual Behistun Inscription that was in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. This opened the door for cuneiform tablets to be read.

In ancient sources, Dilmun was described as, “a place closely resembling the Garden of Eden, where death and sickness did not exist and sweet waters flowed.” [Lewis] The myth Enki and Ninhursag takes place in Dilmun. According to the 1945 article A Sumerian “Paradise” Myth by Samuel N. Kramer, the myth has parallels in the Biblical paradise story as told in the second and third chapters of the Book of Genesis. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature translates sections of the beginning of Enki and Ninhursag as:

Pure is Dilmun land. Virginal is Dilmun land. Pristine is Dilmun land. In Dilmun the raven was not yet cawing, the partridge not cackling. The lion did not slay, the wolf was not carrying off lambs, the dog had not been taught to make kids curl up, the pig had not learned that grain was to be eaten. No singer sang an elulam there. No wailings were wailed in the city’s outskirts there.

Photos of Failaka Found on flickr, taken in 1985

Dilmun is also described as a paradise in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known piece of literature in world history. The epic was unearthed at the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh in 1853 and first translated by George Smith in 1873. The story revolves around Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, and his quest for immortality. In Tablet X, Gilgamesh visits a goddess named Šiduri/Shiduri. When he tells her of his quest, she tells him:

‘Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find the life for which you are looking.
When the gods created man they alloted to him death,
but life they retained in their own keeping.
As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry,
feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water,
cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace;
for this too is the lot of man.’ – Epic of Gilgamesh

In his work Archaeology on the Arabian Gulf, Michael Rice writes that, “in [the Epic of Gilgamesh] the presence of Siduri, a goddess, is important… she lives in an island on the edge of the ocean which is known as the Garden of the Sun. It seems most probable that Failaka was Šiduri’s island. If Failaka is Siduri’s island, Siduri is also to be identified with Artemis, to whom Failaka, under its name of Ikaros, was consecrated.” Here is a video featuring footage of Failaka and three different translations of Šiduri’s speech to Gilgamesh:

Šiduri’s speech doesn’t dissuade Gilgamesh and he wants to continue on his quest. Despite her reservations, Šiduri gives Gilgamesh instructions on how to visit Utanapishtim, the king of Dilmun. The king survived a great flood and achieved immortality. In their 2014 article The Riddle of the Springs of Dilmun, the authors state that, “in the epic Dilmun is described as a heavenly land, a place of the everlasting youth; a holy place without illness or death.” They include a segment of Danny P. Jackson’s translation of the epic:

Dilmun is paradise regained; land where the sun rises, where the deified Utnapishtim settled after surviving the Great Flood.

Paul Lewis writes that while visiting Utanapishtim, “Gilgamesh dives into the sea with stones attached to his feet and brings up the ‘Flower of Immortality.’ In a clear parallel with the biblical story of Adam and Eve, he allows a serpent to eat the flower, cheating mankind of its benefits.” Michael Rice suggests that the actual location that served as the inspiration for this mythical dive into the sea is Khor Fasht in Bahrain.

These images are part of a Babylonian-inspired tarot set

The historical Dilmun civilization was brought to light through archaeology beginning in the 1950s. In his article Beyond the Southern Border of Mesopotamia, Flemming Højlund tells us that in Geoffrey Bibby’s work Looking for Dilmun, he “painted a first sketch of the land of Dilmun, attempting to integrate the early history of the Gulf countries into a wider picture of the ancient world.”

Højlund explains that between 2250 and 2050 BCE, Dilmun was a relatively simple, kinship-based society. From 2050 to 1800, it became more institutionally complex, hierarchically organized, and wealthy due to trade with southern Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley. Around 2000 BCE, Dilmun spread from Bahrain to Failaka; excavations beginning in the 1950s have uncovered Dilmunite pottery, artifacts, houses, and temples.

Photos I took on Failaka in January of 2023

But could Failaka Island be the inspiration for/location of the Garden of Eden, rather than Bahrain? Mary Ann Tetreault wrote that, “there is still debate over whether Failaka is what remains of the Garden of Eden described in the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh.” It also seems that Juris Zarins may have thought that Failaka was the basis for the descriptions of the Garden of Eden.

Failaka Island seems to have had a particularly special religious importance in the Dilmunite civilization, as evidenced by the hundreds of engraved stamp seals uncovered there. Furthermore, unlike mainland Kuwait, Failaka has always had, “potable water and fertile soil [allowing] its occupation among the centuries.” During the time of Alexander the Great, the island was reported as being densely wooded and rich in game. Finally, on the island, there once stood a shrine dedicated to Al Khidr, who is believed to have achieved immortality after drinking from the Fountain of Life. Bibby wrote in Looking for Dilmun that, “surely the women who pass the Tuesday night vigil at the shrine of Al-Khidr in prayer for a child are also seeking immortality of a sort. And the faith that their prayer will be answered is one with that which led Gilgamesh, forty-five centuries ago, across the seas to… Ziusudra, the immortal dweller of Dilmun.”