Biblical archaeologists are using ancient texts and modern technology to uncover possible clues to one of Christianity’s biggest mysteries.
When God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, the Bible says that he placed a cherubim and flaming sword at the entrance that scholars believe is used to guard against their return to this paradise on Earth. But this clear expulsion of human beings hasn’t stopped archaeologists, theologians, and tourists alike from trying to find their way back.
The Bible’s vivid geographical description of Eden gave seekers a head start. Readers are initially told that the Eden is “in the east” and that “in the midst of the garden” were the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—the latter with its tempting fruit that Eve accepted despite God’s warnings, resulting in their expulsion (Genesis 2:9; Genesis 3:3).
But Genesis 2:10-14 narrows down the location saying, “a river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four tributaries,” that include the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, located in southwestern Asia, and the Pishon and Gihon, which researchers are still searching for.
This level of detail is unusual for the Bible and lent an air of authenticity to the story, giving early readers confidence that Eden was a real place.
“Scholars have long exercised their imaginations trying to pin down whether Genesis has some actual [if general] location in mind for where Eden may have been, or where might have inspired the story,” says Joel Baden, professor of divinity and of religious studies at Yale University.
Modern scholars doubt that the Garden of Eden actually existed, arguing that it is a myth designed to explain the world as we currently find it. Still, some archeologists are searching for the real-world setting behind one of the Bible’s most famous stories.
Here are the leading theories of the possible location of the Garden of Eden.
You can still spot some of Eden’s geographical markers today. The Tigris–Euphrates river system are easy to plot on a map and played a major role in the development of ancient Mesopotamian society. The Tigris originates in the Taurus mountains of eastern Turkey and runs south along the border between Turkey and Syria before flowing into Iraq. In southern Iraq, it joins the Euphrates and the conjoined rivers empty into the Persian Gulf.
(How this ancient society helped build the modern world.)
The Pishon and Gihon are harder to pin down. Genesis explains that Pishon is “the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold,” while the Gihon flows around the land of Cush. Scholars say Havilah was in South Arabia, a region known for precious metals. Cush’s location is a bit elusive, “because [the] name [Cush] is used in the Bible for two distinct regions: one in Mesopotamia, and the other in Africa, around Nubia,” says Baden.
Ethiopian tradition associates the Gihon with the Blue Nile, building upon the reference to “the land of Cush” (which Baden says is usually identified with Sudan and Ethiopia). However, this identification doesn’t match the geography laid out in Genesis. Baden says the theory that the Pishon and Gihon are the Nile and the Ganges rivers is false “because those rivers aren't ever called by those names, and because the geography is off.” The Ganges is about 2,350 miles in the wrong direction, he explains. Also, the Nile and the Ganges do not connect to the Euphrates and Tigris, as the rivers in Genesis do.
(Why Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden.)
Some scholars argued the Pishon and Gihon rivers were seasonal or lost waterways that survived only as dry riverbeds. In an article published in Biblical Archaeology, archaeologist James Sauer hypothesized that the Pishon should be identified with the Wadi al-Batin, an intermittently dry channel that runs from Western Saudi Arabia to Kuwait.
While most archaeologists would dispute the existence of Adam and Eve, a common belief among experts is that the authors of Genesis were inspired by the uniquely fertile properties of the marshes of southern Iraq. While the Garden of Eden story may be a myth, it seems to be inspired by the richness of ancient Mesopotamian culture, making it the leading candidate for the garden’s location.
The Mesopotamian region was notorious for its wealthy families and idyllic royal gardens filled with a rich array of plants and trees which may have inspired the biblical story.
The Tigris and Euphrates corroborate the Mesopotamia theory as the rivers supplied water to an extensive floodplain, known as the Fertile Cresent. The region spanned the modern-day countries of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and [some argue] Egypt. During rainy seasons the rivers would flood the valleys, creating fertile soil in an otherwise dry region.
(The royal tombs of Ur revealed Mesopotamia's golden splendor.)
The Fertile Crescent’s stable climate and reliable water source allowed ancient peoples to develop of agricultural systems, cities, and systems of government at the heart of the two rivers. The area is also known as the “cradle of civilization” which was coined in the 19th-century by Egyptologist James Henry Breasted, who argued that human civilization originated there, against the prevailing opinions of the time that prioritized ancient Greece and Rome.
In the 1980s, German-born archaeologist Juris Zarins proposed that the Garden might be submerged under the Persian Gulf. He believed the Gihon corresponded to the Karun River in Iran and that the Pishon could be mapped onto the Wadi al-Batin river system—and decided to take a new approach to prove it. Zarins analyzed satellite images taken by NASA, revealing the dry beds of two large rivers that once flowed from central and southern Arabia into the southwest region of the Persian Gulf.
Climate change and sea level rise are critical elements in this theory. At the end of the last Ice Age the Red Sea was largely dry, extending the region identified with the land of Cush into the southwest tip of the Arabian Peninsula. At the time Genesis was written, melting snow and ice on the mountains would have made the rivers major waterways at the time.
However, no marine archaeology has supported Zarins’ theory. It continues to receive a controversial reception among modern archaeologists and biblical scholars. In his research on the location of Eden, biblical archeologist Joel Klenck says that “Zarins’s theory contradicts the Bible.” While Zarins’ theory would have all four rivers flowing into Eden, Klenck says Genesis “clearly states that all rivers proceeded ‘from’ and not ‘to’ Eden.”
These studies, however, rely on the assumption that the Garden of Eden is a real place that can be located on a map or unearthed by archeology.
While archeologists search for Eden’s location, not all scholars are convinced the Garden of Eden ever truly existed.
University of Exeter professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou says the Garden of Eden was a symbolic space based on ancient royal gardens and conceptually located in Jerusalem itself. Mark Leutcher, a professor of ancient Judaism and the Hebrew Bible at Temple University, explains that the Garden of Eden is not a single place for ancient authors and audiences of the tale. According to Leutcher, the garden symbolizes the ancient west Asian world.
“It represents ideas that are valuable for real human societies to think about, but it uses the language of symbolism and metaphor to impart those ideas,” Leutcher says. “In other words, the Garden of Eden represents the entire cultural world from the coast of the Mediterranean Sea to the eastern frontiers of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires.”
(What was it like to live in Old Babylon?)
Grounded in landscapes of the west Asian world, the Garden of Eden remains shrouded in mystery. But thousands of years later, faith in the it’s existence endures, outlasting and outweighing the evidence that it ever existed at all.
Was the Garden of Eden real? Here’s what archaeologists think. – National Geographic
ByEric Djirackor
Nov 2, 2025
