EUPHRATES. A famous river, the source whereof is in the mountains of Armenia; it runs through the frontiers of Cappadocia, Syria, Arabia Deserta, Chaldæa and Mesopotamia, and thence falls into the Persian Gulf. At present it discharges itself into the Sea through a channel, which is common to this river and the Tigris; but formerly it had a particular channel of its Plin. l. 6. c. 27, & 28. Gen. ii. 14. Plin. l. 5. c. 24. D’Herbelot. Bibl. Orient. p. 353. Josh. i. 4. Deut. i. 7. Strabo l. xi.own: and in Pliny’s time, there were footsteps of this old channel to be seen. Moses says, the Euphrates is the fourth of those rivers, the source whereof was in Paradise. The Scripture often calls it the great River, and assigns it for the Eastern boundary of that Land, which God promised to the Hebrews. Profane1 Authors inform us, that the Euphrates overflows its banks in the Summer, like the Nile, when the snow upon the mountains of Armenia begins to melt. The Author of the book of Ecclesiasticus seems to say the same thing, Ecclus. xxiv. 36.
The source of the Euphrates, as I have observed, as well as of the Tigris, is in the mountains of Armenia. Some of the Ancients Lucan. Pharsal. l. 3.were of opinion, that these two rivers rose from one common spring.
Quaque caput rapido tollit cum Tigride magnus
Euphrates, quos non diversis fontibus edit
Persis ——
And Boëthius in his consolation of Philosophy2,
Tigris & Euphrates uno se fonte resolvant,
Et mox abjunctis dissociantur aquis.
But at present we know the contrary, and that these two famous rivers have their source at a great distance from one another. Pliny and Strabo place the head of it in mount Abo, or Aba, in Armenia; but in almost every thing besides, these two Authors are opposite to each other. Strabo says, this river springs out of the North side of mount Taurus, and that it runs at first Westward, and afterwards towards the South. Pliny, on the contrary, tells us, from witnesses who had been upon the spot, that the Euphrates flows from North to South, and then returns to the West.
The Arabians divide the Euphrates into the larger and the lesser; the larger is that which rising in the Gordian mountains, discharges itself into the Tigris near Anbar and Pelongiah. The smaller, the channel whereof is often wider than that of the larger, takes its course towards Chaldæa, passes through Corofah, and empties itself into the Tigris, between Vassith and Naharvan, in a place called at present Carna, that is to say, Horn, because in reality it is the horn, or confluence3 fluence of the great and little Euphrates.
From the lesser, one passes into the larger Euphrates, through a canal dug by Trajan’s order. This is the Fossa Regia, or the Basilius fluvius of the Greeks and Romans, by the Syrians called Nahermalca, through which the Emperor Severus passed in his way to Ctesiphon on the Tigris, when he besieged this city. The violence of the Persian Gulph causes a reflux higher than thirty leagues above the mouth of the Euphrates. The Arabians are persuaded, that the waters of this river are very healthy, and have the vertue of curing all sorts of diseases.
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