Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
for his dip. Achilles eventually lost his life when a poisoned arrow hit him in this heel, an
episode that spawned the expression 'Achilles' heel', still used to describe a person's prin-
cipal weakness.
Traversing a river to the underworld appears in other belief systems. The Sanzu River is
the river to cross in the Japanese Buddhist tradition, and the Vaitarna River serves the same
purpose in several Hindu religious texts, although only for sinners (those who do good
deeds in life do not have to cross the river).
Rivers also feature prominently in accounts of Paradise, in Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic
traditions. Early Christians adopted the Hebrew Bible and with it the story of Genesis, in
which a single unnamed river is described as flowing out of Eden to water the garden, from
where it emerges to feed four rivers. These rivers - the Tigris, Euphrates, Gihon, and Pison
- flow to different parts of the world. While the Tigris and Euphrates are known quantities,
the Gihon and Pison were a source of wonderment and confusion for many travellers in
ancient and medieval times. The Gihon was long associated with Arabia and later became
identified as the Ganges or Indus and, on occasion, the Danube. The source of the Gihon,
by contrast, was commonly placed in Ethiopia and hence the river was equated with the
Nile. The apparent impossibility of such widely disparate rivers as the Tigris, Euphrates,
Ganges, and Nile all having a common source in the Garden of Eden was explained by the
suggestion that these rivers flowed underground on leaving Eden initially, resurfacing at
great distance from Paradise and from each other.
