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Athanasius Kircher
1. River of Paradise, rising out of the
ground
Following the theory that one of the four holy rivers pouring out of
Paradise was called Gihon, and the Arabic tradition that, of course, Gihon
is really the Nile, Moses bar Cepha, the Arab geographer, describes how the
river plunges deep in the earth, then emerges in the highlands of Ethiopia.
Kircher quotes bar Cepha in Latin, and Lowes translates for us.
When asked how the river could rise back to the surface, bar Cepha comes up
with a model putting Paradise much higher than Ethiopia, so the river
plunges down with such force that, of course, it must rise up again at the
headwaters of the Nile, in Ethiopia.
With God all things are possible.
And for Lowes, this holy river pouring down into caverns, and coming back up
out of the earth in chasms, with immense force, may have been in the back of
Coleridge's mind as he wrote Kubla Khan.
Text
Nomen secundi fluvii Gihhon (qui et Nilus dicitur) hic omnem terram Chus
percurrit; nam simul ac paradisum egreditur, infra profunda maris et
Oceani
vada dilapsus, hinc rursus per occultos terrae meatus emergit in montibus
Aethiopicis…
Sed urgebit, inquit, aliquis, qui fieri posit, ut fluvii illi e
paradise egressi sub Oceani vada et cor maris praecipitentur, atque inde
tandem in hac terra nostra emergant?…
Deinde hoc quoque asserimus, paradisum
multo sublimiore regione positum esse, raneorum meatuum praecipitia
delabantur fluvii, tanto cum impetus impulse, coarctatique sub maris fundum
rapiantur, unde rursus emergant, ebulliantque in hoc orbe nostro --Kircher,
I 52. |
 Other sources
William Bartram |