One interesting tale is about the directions in the bible.  The biblical Hebrew word yam, Strong’s number 3220, has two English words, west and sea. On first examination, it does not appear that those two words have anything in common at all.  Is the idea of translinear wrong?  Does the biblical Hebrew assign two meanings to the same word?  A little bit of thought can help you conclude that within the geographical location of Israel, the west direction WAS the sea. The only thing to the west of Israel was the sea, up and down the entire border. However, once you read scripture outside of Israel, those two words are no longer identical. The west direction is also referred to as the direction of the “sun coming down”. 

The north direction is the only direction which has a single designation, north.  The east direction is also designated as the direction of the “sun rising”, and is sometimes referred to as the “Ancient-East”.  The Ancient-East area appears to refer to early Iraq, Abraham’s first home. The south direction is very complicated in biblical Hebrew.  It has three designations, two of which are tied to landmarks.  The first is south, which is derived from the area of South-Canaan (Strong’s 5045).  This area is the Negev desert area today in Israel.  The second (Strong’s 8486) is related to the Arabian oasis, Teima, which is named after Esau’s grandson.  In ARTB, the direction is given as southeast.  Finally, there is the southern direction, not apparently related to any landmark. (Strong’s 1864).

So, you can see that the Israelites thought of directions mostly as landmarks or geography rather than the simple north, east, south and west we use today. 

You can locate the Tiema oasis on Map A on page 692 in the Ancient Roots Translinear Bible.  You can see that it was an important rest stop on the Incense trade route from Yeman to Damascus, and ultimately to Iraq.