A 1599 Bible Map Places the Garden of Eden Near Mount Ararat
A map printed in a late-sixteenth-century Geneva Bible is drawing new attention because of where it places the Garden of Eden: near the headwaters of the Euphrates in the region of Armenia, close to Mount Ararat.
The map, usually titled “The Situation of the Garden of Eden,” has circulated again this week after an antique Bible collector featured a 1599 example online. The image is old, not a newly discovered archaeological map, but it preserves a striking Reformation-era attempt to connect the geography of Genesis with the known world.
Oxford’s History of Science Museum notes that maps of Eden appeared in Geneva Bibles beginning in the sixteenth century. The map used in later editions drew on scholarship associated with John Calvin’s commentary on Genesis and was intended to help readers visualize the biblical account geographically.
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Genesis 2 describes a river flowing out of Eden and then dividing into four branches: Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel or Tigris, and Euphrates. The Tigris and Euphrates are readily identifiable, while the locations of the Pishon and Gihon have been debated for centuries.
The Geneva Bible map places the discussion in the broader region of Mesopotamia and Armenia. Modern reporting has focused on the fact that this puts Eden near the same general part of eastern Türkiye associated with Mount Ararat.
That does not make the map archaeological evidence that Eden was located there. It records how Bible scholars and editors in the Reformation period tried to interpret the geography of Genesis. Oxford’s museum describes the maps as part of a broader effort to present biblical locations as real places that could be pictured on a map.
The renewed interest comes as researchers are also conducting a new round of geological work at the Durupınar formation near Mount Ararat, a separate site that has long been associated by some researchers with Noah’s Ark.
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