21xt Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:12-13, geography

Genesis 2:12-13

יב וּֽזֲהַ֛ב הָאָ֥רֶץ הַהִ֖וא ט֑וֹב שָׁ֥ם הַבְּדֹ֖לַח וְאֶ֥בֶן הַשֹּֽׁהַם:

יג וְשֵׁם־הַנָּהָ֥ר הַשֵּׁנִ֖י גִּיח֑וֹן ה֣וּא הַסּוֹבֵ֔ב אֵ֖ת כָּל־אֶ֥רֶץ כּֽוּשׁ:

 

Translation:     The gold of that land is good; there is the b’dolach and the shoham stone.

The name of the second river is Gichon; it is the one surrounding all the land of Kush.

 

The reason I didn’t give meanings for the two stones is that there’s no agreement on what they are.  Online dictionaries of the languages of Mesopotamia, Sumerian and Akkadian, don’t have cognates.

My personal guess is that they are ruby tin and diamond tin, two forms of cassiterite which are found in alluvial soils downstream of tin deposits. I get this from two facts but I have no idea if I’m right. One is that b’dolach resembles b’dil, which is generally agreed to be tin. The other is that the shoham stone is used in the efod and is engraved. The hardness value of diamond is 10 but that of diamond tin is about 8, like ruby.

 

I also didn’t translate Kush but it might be Kish, the great city of Mesopotamia. When a leader wanted to show how important he was, he called himself King of Kish. There was even a queen of Mesopotamia who called herself King of Kish.

 

This is not Ethiopia, which was once known as Kush. We are in Mesopotamia, not Africa. There’s no doubt that at some point, the Jews and Ethiopians were in contact; Ethiopians are mentioned in Jeremiah (from about 600 BCE) and that refers to the culture that partly ruled over Egypt and was known in Egyptian as Kash. At the point in archaeological time I’m talking about now, which is before 3000 BCE, the Kerma culture of Ethiopia was just starting to take shape.

 

The names Pishon and Gichon are not known in any other source. If you know of a publication about cuneiform that comes up with something like them, give me a link to it. Which gets me into dangerous territory but I’ve covered it on the blog.