Euphrates

Vaughan, Thomas. Euphrates, or, The waters of the East being a short discourse of that secret fountain, whose water flows from fire and carries in it the beams of the sun and moon / by Eugenius Philalethes. .. London Printed for Humphrey Moseley at the Princes Arms in St. Paul s church-yard, 1655. 7 p.l., 124 [i.e. 120], [16] p. 

A similar connection between the world around us and cosmology can be found in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates. The Earth was regarded as a flat disc, surrounded by a vast hollow space which was in turn surrounded by the Armament of heaven. In the Sumerian creation myth, heaven and Earth formed... 

DouAbul, A.A., H.T. Al-Saad, A.A. Al-Timari, and H.N. Al-Rekabi. 1988. Tigris-Euphrates Delta a major source of pesticides to the Shatt al-Arab River (Iraq). Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 17 405-418. 

At the time when we contemplate the extent of the Assyrian empire after it had regained from Egypt the countries from the Euphrates to the Nile—at the moment when Nebuchadnezzar was lifted up with pride in the city which he had built, and the lofty branches of the tree seemed to reach to heaven1, the Almighty was about to cut it down, and to raise up a king, whose right hand he was to hold, to subvert nations before him, and to loose the loins of kings. 

The Middle Eastern traditions stem from the ancient civilizations of the area known as the Fertile Crescent. This area stretches from the eastern Mediterranean coast that is now part of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, to the fertile lands that exist between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as they flow to the Persian Gulf. To the ancient Greeks this eastern end was known as Mesopotamia and it is now part of Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Unlike Egypt, with its insular and stable culture, the Fertile Crescent was inhabited by several cultures, which migrated, conquered, and merged over the centuries. 

Herodotus (484-425 B.C.) mentioned the occurrence of many lumps of bitumen in the River Is, a small tributary of the Euphrates (10). The Babylonians heated this bitumen and used it instead of mortar for cementing together the bricks of their walls and buildings (11). Herodotus also spoke of a well near Susa (the Shushan of the Bible) which yielded bitumen, salt, and oil (11). Cornelius Tacitus, a friend of Pliny the Younger, described the bitumen of the Dead Sea (12). R. J. Forbes states in his book Bitumen and Petroleum in Antiquity that the ancients used tar and pitch for waterproofing pottery, for caulking ships, and for making torches, paint for roofs and walls, and lampblack for paints and ink (13). 

DouAbul, A.A., H.T. Al-Saad, A.A. Al-Timari, and H.N. Al-Rekabi. 1988. Tigris-Euphrates Delta a major source of pesticides to the Shatt al-Arab River (Iraq). Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 17 405-418. Dowd, P.F., G.U. Mayfield, D.P. Coulon, J.B. Graves, and J.D. Newsom. 1985. Organochlorine residues in animals from three Louisiana watersheds in 1978 and 1979. Bull. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 3 832-841. Eisenberg, M. and J.J. Topping. 1985. Organochlorine residues in finfish from Maryland waters 1976-1980. 

The discovery of fennel, cumin and coriander seeds at some ancient burial sites suggests that taste and/or smell was incorporated into human cultural practices very long ago. A few cloves in a charred vessel formd in a settlement on the banks of the Euphrates in Syria have been dated to about ryoo BC and because cloves grew thousands of miles to the east in the Spice Islands, this suggests that NP-rich products were being trade over very long distances at an early stage in human history. ... 

The Mesopotamian materials, despite their extreme variety of types and time periods, showed a remarkably consistent pattern. Distinctions between the upper and lower Tigris materials do not seem possible, given the elements obtained in the analysis. The ceramics from the one Euphrates site, Babylon, also fit the Tigris pattern. Materials from sites higher along the Euphrates are needed to complete the profile of Mesopotamia. 

Legumes are found in locations from the tropics to beyond the Arctic Circle and are most frequent and diverse in tropical rain forests and savannahs. They provide major sources of food, fibers, fodder, timber, drugs and many other products, and have done so since ancient times. Seeds of legumes have been found as tomb offerings in the earliest Egyptian and Tigris-Euphrates civilizations and from prehistoric and medieval lake dwelling sites in Europe. 

A bronze Greek shield was found on the Euphrates with the engraved fragment of a traveler s map showing some parts of the Black Sea - Odessos, Bibona, Callatis, Chersonese and others. 

Euphrates, the islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the islands of the Pacific not heretofore... 

The first great Islamic alchemist is Jabir ibn Hayyan, known in Latin as Geber, and he is often cited as the greatest of all Arab workers in the art. Jabir was born in the town of Tus in Khorassan (near the modern city of Meshed) around the year 721, and may have lived for some time in the city of Kufa, on the western banks of the Euphrates. The young Jabir was educated by Bedouin, and also seems to have been a member of the Sufis, the mystical branch of Islam that rejected the luxuries of court life for an austere life of prayer, contemplation and ecstasy. Many prominent Arab alchemists — such as Jabir and Ibn Arabi — were Sufis, and their influence on the development of alchemy and the dissemination of alchemical ideas cannot be overestimated. 

Pliny was also aware of the fact that some kinds of iron are less resistant to corrosion than others, and specifically mentions2 a species that is more particularly liable to rust. He further states 3 that there is in existence at the city of Zeugma, upon the Euphrates, an iron chain by means of which Alexander the Great constructed a bridge across the river the links of which that have been replaced are attacked with rust, while the original links are totally exempt from it. ... 

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