Unlike the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Pishon has never been clearly located. It is briefly mentioned together with the Tigris in the
Wisdom of Sirach (24:25/35), but this reference throws no more light on the location of the river. The Jewish–Roman historian
Flavius Josephus, in the beginning of his
Antiquities of the Jews (1st century AD) identified the Pishon with the
Ganges. The medieval French rabbi
Rashi identified it with the
Nile. Some early modern scholars such as
Antoine Augustin Calmet (1672–1757) and later figures such as
Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmüller (1768–1835), and
Carl Friedrich Keil (1807–1888), believed the source river [for Eden] was a region of springs: "The Pishon and Gihon were mountain streams. The former may have been the
Phasis or
Araxes, and the latter the
Oxus." James A. Sauer, former curator of the Harvard
Semitic Museum, argued from geology and history that Pishon referred to what is now the
Wadi al-Batin, a largely dry channel whose source begins in the
Hijaz Mountains near
Medina, to run northeast to
Kuwait. With the aid of satellite photos,
Farouk El-Baz of
Boston University traced the dry channel from Kuwait up the
Wadi al-Batin and the
Wadi al-Rummah system originating near Medina at
Jibāl al Abyaḑ.
David Rohl identified Pishon with the
Uizhun, placing Havilah to the northeast of
Mesopotamia. The Uizhun is known locally as the Golden River. Rising near the
stratovolcano Sahand, it meanders between ancient
gold mines and lodes of
lapis lazuli before feeding the
Caspian Sea. Such natural resources correspond to ones associated with the land of Havilah in Genesis. Dan'el Kahn of the
University of Haifa suggested that the name Pishon might come from Egyptian word pA-Shen, meaning the ocean. The
Babylonian Map of the World calls the ocean the "bitter river". File:Qasr libya 1 02d pishon.jpg|Mosaic representing Pishon from Church of Theodorias (
Qasr Libya) AD 539 File:Opere di Filippo Biagioli Libri d'Oro Ebraici, dedicato al fiume Piscion.jpg|alt=Jewish Golden Books by Filippo Biagioli, dedicated to the river Pison (Piscion or Pishon)|Jewish Golden Books by modern artist
Filippo Biagioli, dedicated to the river Pishon ==References==