This text is an adapted excerpt from “Babylon, Albion”, by Dalia Al-Dujaili, 2025. saqibooks.com
Whether earthly or heavenly, our understanding of paradise—an eternal state of peace and rest— remains a garden. This idea found its way into Abrahamic texts: Eden shares its narrative with the Sumerian “garden of the gods,” which was later adopted by the Babylonians who conquered Sumer (ancient Iraq). So that today, Judeo-Christian and Islamic origin stories share strikingly similar, and in some cases, even directly mirror ancient Sumerian myths.
A garden is seen as a divine space, a place almost between heaven and earth.