River
Fluvius Heromicas
Scheriat el Mandhur
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Rising in the hills of the Hauran and the Golan, and running in a deep bed past sulphur springs, the Scheriat el Mandhur in the Jordan valley is the river the Tabula names Fluvius Heromicas. Its Greek name was shaped from the older Semitic name Yarmuk, already found in the Talmud, much as Jerusalem became Hierosolyma. The Roman writer Pliny has it flowing past the city of Gadara. In reality it joins the Jordan a few kilometres below the Sea of Galilee, yet the map draws it east of the Jordan, running into the Dead Sea as a river of its own, almost certainly a mistake.