Tigris
River of Turkey and Iraq, briefly bordering Syria
Named among the four rivers that flow from Eden (Genesis 2:14). It rises in eastern Turkey and joins the Euphrates in southern Iraq on its way to the Persian Gulf.
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Where
The places the pages name: what they were then, what they are now, and whether they’ve been found and dug.
Mesopotamia and the north
Euphrates
River of Turkey, Syria and Iraq
The fourth river of Eden (Genesis 2:14), and the river of Babylon. The Bible often calls it simply “the River.”
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Ararat
Eastern Turkey, Armenia and northwest Iran
Genesis 8:4 sets the ark’s landing in “the mountains of Ararat,” the ancient kingdom of Urartu. The peak now called Mount Ararat took the name later.
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Babylon
Ruins near Hillah, Iraq · Excavated
Babel of Genesis 11, on the Euphrates. Its great temple tower, Etemenanki, may lie behind the story of the tower that reached toward the sky.
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Tell Fekheriyeh
Northeast Syria · Excavated
The mound where, in 1979, a statue of a local ruler with an inscription in Aramaic and Akkadian, from about the 800s BC, that calls it his “image” and “likeness.”
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The land of Israel
Bethlehem
Bethlehem, West Bank
A town in the hills of Judah about six miles south of Jerusalem, the home of Jesse and his son David.
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Jerusalem
Jerusalem · Excavated
A Jebusite city that David captured and made his capital (2 Samuel 5:6–9). Its oldest part, the City of David, is the ridge running south from the Temple Mount.
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Valley of Elah
Emek HaEla, west of Bethlehem
The “valley of the terebinth,” in the low hills of the Shephelah, where Saul’s army faced the Philistines and David fought their champion (1 Samuel 17).
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Socoh
Tel Socho (Khirbet ʿAbbad), beside Khirbet Shuweikeh
A town of Judah on the south side of the valley of Elah; the Philistines camped between it and Azekah (1 Samuel 17:1).
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Azekah
Tel Azekah · Excavated
A hilltop town of Judah where the valley of Elah bends north around it, on the same side as Socoh; the Philistines camped between the two (1 Samuel 17:1).
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Khirbet Qeiyafa
Above the valley of Elah · Excavated 2007–2013
A small fortified town on a ridge on the north side of the valley, with two gates by its excavators’ account, dated by radiocarbon to around 1000 BC. Who built it is debated.
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Gath
Tell es-Safi · Excavated 1996–2021
One of the five chief cities of the Philistines and Goliath’s home, where the valley of Elah opens toward the coast. It was destroyed around 830 BC, most likely by Hazael of Damascus.
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Dan
Tel Dan, northern Israel · Excavated
Israel’s northernmost city, at one of the main springs of the Jordan below Mount Hermon. An Aramaic victory inscription found there in 1993 names “the house of David.”
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