The Rivers of Paradise and Children of Shem, with a Copious Appendix, and a Disquisition.
London: Rivingtons, 1855. First Edition. Hardcover. Slim octavo. 88pp. Blue cloth lettered in gilt on front board, blind-stamped decorations on boards. B/w frontis. & one other b/w plate. An unusual early nineteenth century work of Biblical archaeology. The author focusses his researches on the river Pison (Pishon) one of four rivers mentioned in the Book of Genesis, which are described as arising within the Garden of Eden. By the mid-nineteenth century there was some agreement that two of those rivers, the Hiddekel and the Phrath were respectively the Tigris and the Euphrates, and some posited, like Stirling, that the Gihon was the Nile, but the Pison remained a mystery. In this book, Stirling sets out to prove that the Nerbudda (Narmada) river was the same as the Pison, and that the region around it was "was the ancient dwelling-place of the children of Shem, and the birth-place of Abraham." In addition to citing textual sources, Stirling describes his own travels in the region in the 1840s, and includes as an appendix an essay on the supposed penetration by the armies of the Egyptian pharaoh Seostris into India - to demonstrate that there was connection between the Holy Land and India in Biblical times. Cloth a bit rubbed and darkened particularly at spine and outer margins of boards, all edges and extremities lightly chafed, corners and spine ends bumped, pages slightly darkened with some browning, moderate foxing to frontis & plate, otherwise a solid, internally-clean near-VG copy. Item #45539
Price: $95.00