Gihon

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Gihon

For the Okinawan king, see Gihon (Ryukyu)
Gihon (Ryukyu)

was a "king" of Okinawa, the third and last of the Tenson Line. He succeeded his father Shunbajunki at the age of 44, in 1248.Gihon's reign was marked by terrible disasters, including famine, epidemics, and devastating typhoons....
. For the Gihon Spring in Jerusalem, see Gihon Spring
Gihon Spring

The Gihon Spring was the main source of water for Ophel, the original site of Jerusalem. Three main water systems allowed water to be brought from the spring to the city under cover:...
.

Gihon is the name of a river

River

A river is a natural stream of water, usually freshwater, flowing toward an ocean, a lake, or another stream. In some cases a river flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water....
first mentioned in the second chapter of the Biblical

Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
book of Genesis

Genesis

Genesis or Breishit is the first book of the Bible used by Judaism and Christianity, and the first of five books of the Pentateuch or Torah....
. The Gihon is mentioned as one of four rivers (along with the Tigris

Tigris

The Tigris is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates, which flows from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq....
, Euphrates

Euphrates

The Euphrates is the western of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia which flows from Anatolia....
, and Pishon

Pishon

The Pishon is one of four rivers mentioned in the Bible Book of Genesis . In that passage, these rivers are described as arising within the Garden of Eden....
) issuing out of the Garden of Eden

Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden is a location described in the Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam , and his wife, Eve , lived after they were created by God....
that branched from a single river within the garden. The name (Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
Gihôn) may be interpreted as "Bursting Forth, Gushing".

The Gihon is described as "encircling the entire land of Cush

Biblical Cush

Cush was the eldest son of Ham, son of Noah, brother of Canaan and the father of Nimrod , mentioned in the "Table of Nations" in the Hebrew Bible ....
", a name associated with Ethiopia

Ethiopia

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River

Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
book of Genesis

Genesis

Tigris

The Tigris is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates, which flows from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq....
, Euphrates

Euphrates

The Euphrates is the western of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia which flows from Anatolia....
, and Pishon

Pishon

The Pishon is one of four rivers mentioned in the Bible Book of Genesis . In that passage, these rivers are described as arising within the Garden of Eden....
) issuing out of the Garden of Eden

Garden of Eden

Hebrew language

Biblical Cush

Cush was the eldest son of Ham, son of Noah, brother of Canaan and the father of Nimrod , mentioned in the "Table of Nations" in the Hebrew Bible ....
", a name associated with Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast....
elsewhere in the Bible. This is one of the reasons that Ethiopians have long identified the Gihon with the Abay River, which encircles the former kingdom of Gojjam

Gojjam

Gojjam was a province in the north-western part of Ethiopia, with its capital city at Debre Marqos. This province is distinctive for lying entirely within the bend of the Abbay River from its outflow from Lake Tana to the Sudanese border....
. From a current geographic standpoint this would seem impossible, since two of the other rivers said to issue out of Eden, the Tigris and the Euphrates, are in Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern Iraq, as well as some parts of northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khuzestan Province of southwestern Iran....
. However, the scholar Edward Ullendorff

Edward Ullendorff

Edward Ullendorff is a British academic, and an authority on Semitic languages and Ethiopia. He is now Professor Emeritus at SOAS, where he was Professor of Ethiopian Studies and then of Semitic Languages....
has argued in support of this identification. The city in the Mesopotamian area which best fits the description is called Kish

Kish (Sumer)

Kish is modern Tell al-Uhaymir, Babil Governorate, Iraq), and was an ancient city of Sumer. Kish is located some 12 km east of Babylon, and 80 km south of Baghdad....
(derivative of Kush or Cush) located in a plain area (Sumerian 'edin') and resembles an area that is repeatedly flooded by the rivers today called Euphrates and Tigris.

Nineteenth century, Modern, and Arabic scholars have sought to identify the "land of Cush" with Hindu Kush

Hindu Kush

The Hindu Kush is a mountain range located in eastern and central Afghanistan, northwestern Pakistan and northeastern India.The origin of the name Hindu Kush is disputed, despite its coinage apparently dating back no further than c.1330....
, and Gihon with Amu Darya

Amu Darya

The Amu Darya is the longest river in Central Asia. Its name is sometimes represented in a single word, Amudarya .Amu is said to have come from the city of Amul, now known as T?rkmenabat....
(Jihon/Jayhon of the Islamic texts). Amu Darya was known in the medieval Islamic writers as Jayhun or Ceyhun in Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
. This was a derivative of Jihon, or Zhihon as it is still known by the Persians.

Gihon has also been associated with the Araxes (modern Aras) river of Armenia

Armenia

Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in South Caucasus between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea....
. Another proposed idea is that the Gihon river no longer exists, or has significantly altered its course, since the topography of the area has supposedly been altered by the Noachian Flood.

Some modern secular scholars note that the Gihon river remains unidentified, since the geographical ideas of the author(s) of Genesis cannot be reconstructed and need not conform with actual geography as known today: In Genesis 2, the Euphrates, Tigris, Gihon and Pishon rivers are all said to issue out of Eden and become 'four heads', but the Euphrates and the Tigris do not take their rise in the same place, and the Pishon

Pishon

The Pishon is one of four rivers mentioned in the Bible Book of Genesis . In that passage, these rivers are described as arising within the Garden of Eden....
river remains as unidentified.

First-century Jewish historian Josephus

Josephus

Josephus , also known as Yosef Ben Matityahu and, after he became a Roman citizenship, as Titus Flavius Josephus, was a first-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70....
associated the Gihon river with the Nile

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the List of rivers by length in the world.The Nile has two major tributary, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile's water and silt, but the former being the longer of the two....
(Jewish Antiquities, 1.39). However, a quite different Hebrew word is used to designate the Nile elsewhere in the Bible, and even in ancient times it should have been obvious that the Nile could not have a common source with the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Gihon is also the name of the only natural spring of water in the vicinity of Jerusalem

Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and its List of Israeli cities in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if Positions on Jerusalem East Jerusalem is included....
. It feeds the Pool of Siloam

Pool of Siloam

Pool of Siloam is a rock-cut pool on the southern slope of the City of David now outside the walls of the Old City to the southeast. The pool was fed by the waters of the Gihon Spring, which were carried there by two aqueducts - the Middle Bronze Age Channel , and Hezekiah's Tunnel ...
. See "Gihon Spring

Gihon Spring

The Gihon Spring was the main source of water for Ophel, the original site of Jerusalem. Three main water systems allowed water to be brought from the spring to the city under cover:...
". The Book of Jasher refers to the "Great Sea Gihon", which is believed to mean the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions; with a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres . It covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface....
.

External links

Walter Reinhold Wartting Mattfeld y de la Torre, The Gihon River is Wadi Aqiq and Cush is Harrat Kishb? (Or is Wadi al Ghinah the Gihon?), .

Gihon

See also

External links