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Egyptian gardens

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

The Egyptian gardens are the most ancient. Of the very first ones we don’t have any graphic documentation but we have some written description. Thus we know how the garden of Meten, a general and a great priest, who lived around the 2700 B.C.under the reign of the last Pharaoh of the third dinasty and the first of the fourth, was made. An ancient text tells us that Meten built a residence for himself in a square enclosure measuring 105 m from all sides. In this plot he planted trees, palm and figs and in front of the house a vine trellis that produced wine for the house. On top of this there were many water basins surrounded by the greenery that furnished an excellent shelter to the aquatic fowls. This is the first description of a garden that we have got and also if we are obliged to let our fantasy ride to see it resurrected, it is very important because many centuries passed before we got archaeological and graphic representations of them.
The first discovery of gardens’s archaeological remains belong to the 2100 B.C. It was the one in front of Nebhepetre Mentuhopte Deir-el-Bahari’s temple. To plant the trees, gardeners were obliged to cut deep pits in the rock. Thus on this vast terrace great sycamore thrived and, among flower beds, powerful statues of the king stood under their shade.
Not far from here another interesting garden was created with the same system. It was the one wanted by Queen Hatchepsut for her Deir-el-Bahari’s temple, one of the most scenographic holy edifice of all Egypt, a shrine built in the desert on terraces sloping down on the rocky hill’s sides. If we must believe what was written on in the second terrace’s portico the creation of this garden was requested by one of the god who was worshipped in the same temple.
As a matter of fact there the hieroglyphs tell us that Ammon himself appeared to the queen while she was sleeping and expressed to her his wish to have a very large park in which to stroll at his ease. He recommended to plant in it luxuriant trees and even to acclimatize there those incense’s trees that thrived so well in the mysterious reign of Punt (maybe Puoni on Somalyland coast). To be more exact the god told her that he wanted that “a Punt was created in his home”.
Due to the importance of the requester the Queen sped up to obey and sent an expedition to that far away country. Here, after giving the Queen’s gifts to the king of Punt and to his disfigured wife (she suffered from elephantiasis), the Egyptian seamen were allowed to take the precious trees and, to contain also the soil attached to their roots, they immediately put them in large baskets: in such a way the plants were taken on the ships that waited riding at anchor near the coast. The seafaring was happily concluded - said the inscription of the second terrace’s portico - and the plants reached green and luxuriant Hatchepsut’s temple.
In the meantime the Queen had created a system of pipe-line to bring the necessary irrigation water at Deir-el-Bahari’s, and had ordered that all the rocky plain in front of the temple should be arranged as a garden. Great pits had been excavated, and to help the plants to take roots, they had been filled with the fertile Nyle’s soil. At the ships’s arrival Queen Hatchepsut herself transplanted the precious trees with her delicate hands. It seems that the incense ones did not succeed in taking roots and wilted down. Maybe they had suffered during the navy trip or maybe they couldn’t stand the desert’s arid climate. A remedy was offered by the sycamore (Ficus Sykomoros) the preferred tree of the Egyptians and those grew strong and luxuriant; there is no reason then to be astonished if, during Deir-el-Bahari’s excavations the rests of their trunks were found in the pits in which they had been planted. Egypt sand is an inert and dry material, very special and it preserved their wood through all those millenniums.
The Sycamore, a very beautiful tree, had a special significance for the Egyptians. Many legends had been woven around it. For an ancient belief it was just a sycamore that, between the rising and the setting sun, stood high and mighty under the vault of the heaven and he happily swayed in the wind its malachite leaves. Then there is no reason to be astonished if this plant, very present in all Egyptian gardens, was considered a beneficent goddess, and if the farmers revered her with special rites presenting her with offerings and adoration. Its fruits and its wood were greatly appreciated, and the Egyptians believed that her beneficent shade, so pleasant to the livings, filled with joy also the dead people. The sacred tree also protected the lovers. In a papyrus we read of a blooming sycamore that in the “feast of the Garden” day sent its message to a girl.
“The little Sycamore - that she planted with her hands – move its lips to speak. – How beautiful are its branches! – they are charged with fruits – that are redder than jasper. - Its shade is fresh – It sets a love message in the hands of the girl –the daughter of the head gardener – it asks her to hurry and rejoin her loved one. – “Come, and stay with your handmaids. – We will be drunk when we will arrive, - yes, even before drinking. – The servant who obey you – are coming with their jugs – and bring every kind of beer – and every kind of bread – and bring today and yesterday flowers – and all the thirst quenching fruits. - Come and make happy this day -. Tomorrow, and even the day after, and for all these three days - ………………. - Her lover sit at her right side. – She entices him – and she yields to his requests …….. – But I am silent –I won’t tell what I saw – I won’t say a word.”
In the Egyptian representations we can still see garden similar to the one described in this mischievous poetry. These paintings are done with a special graphic technique which tried to set in contemporary evidence all there was in this garden: flowerbeds, plants, basins, pavilions, the building’s façade, its back side and all its sides and so on. The different things are represented part in plan and part in front view, and, at first, the drawing seems very difficult to be understood, but after while, when one get used to it, he will appreciate it because it furnish all the elements present in the enclosure.
Lets analyze one of these frescoes and exactly the one that represents a luxurious Theban villa of Amenhotep (Amenophis) III’s times, a garden that can be dated between the 1405 and the 1370 B.C.. As we just said we see it part in plan and part in front view, In plan we have all the garden, while all the rest is drawn in front view. The house set on the painting left side is even represented in cross section so that we can see all its floor and its furniture.
In this painting we see a garden enclosed by a wall topped by “coppi” ((hollow tiles with a semicircular section). A row of trees that flanks an alley runs along one side of the enclosure, while on the other side of the street there is a canal. On the right side of the painting the entrance door is represented in front view but to give to onlookers the possibility to appreciate it, it is not turned along the wall but toward them. It is a huge and very imposing gate just as if it was a temple entrance. Some scholars have even deemed that in the reality it couldn’t have been so stately, and that this graphic expedient had been just done to impress the onlookers and to underline the wealth and the importance of the house’s proprietor. However the recent discovery of a Nylotic mosaic in which a row of villas set along a canal display a series of doors of the same kind, confirms the existence of those characteristic elements in the garden enclosures.
In this painting, the master’s house is set at the centre of the garden A vineyard on trellis, set between the enclosure’s entrance and the proprietor residence, flanks the alley leading to it. All around the building there are flower beds, lanes shaded by sycamore trees, date palms and doum ones. Then there, in side view and looking over two of the four basins existing in the garden, there are two nice pavilions in which one could pause and rest admiring these sheets of water. The basins are drawn in plan while the lotus’ flowers that circled around them are represented in front. Always seen in front were the small ducks that swam in their azure waters, and also seen in front were the fishes swimming in them, and in front the lotus’ flowers emerging from the basins. In short there was an endless exchange of the ways to represent the different parts of this residence: plan, front view and cross section, but everything was done with such an exactitude that it would have been possible to perfectly reconstruct this garden and put again at their place all the elements and the plants that constituted it.
Then came the 1350 B.C. and Akenaten revolution. Flowers, trees and basins dominated his figurative art and adorned the architecture of Tell-el-Amarna, his capital. And yet it must not have been easy to create gardens in this desertic area. For making trees and greenery grow there, the citizens had to substitute all its sterile soil and then bring water from very far away. However, notwhitstanding all these difficulties, the noble men residences were surrounded by huge parks enclosed in high walls. In them the rigidly geometric schemes that up to then had dominated the Egyptian gardening were abandoned, swept away by the enthusiastic artistic reform of the heretic Pharaoh. Freer form were adopted. Then the garden invaded also the houses with their rooms adorned with frescoes of greenery, flowers and birds. Representations of gardens were even painted on the flooring and more and more the rooms opened themselves over green courtyards adorned by azure basins.
However all the Egyptian frescoes and descriptions of their gardens made clear to us how much during all their civilization Egyptian loved their gardens and this is confirmed also by two century later papyri that register what another great lover of gardening (Ramsete III) 1198-1166 had done, and give news of some of his parks among which is the one he created for the god Amon.
“I excavated a basin in front of thy palace” declared the Pharaoh “a basin on which the ocean of sky flows, and I planted it with trees in the manner used in the Low Egypt. Vines, thickets, fruit groves and flowers are now all around thy temple and in thy front.”
In another inscriptions he boasted to have built other pavilions in front of which he had created basins for the lotus’ flower and with all the amenities of those times gardens.
Another park was created on the delta always by Ramses the III and - as the Pharaoh tells us – it was very important because in it there were
“Ample spaces where to stroll among any kind of trees that bears sweet fruits, while flowers from all part of the world shone along the holy lanes, and lotus and papyri were more numerous than the grains of sand.”
After these Ramses the III created many other gardens for his country temples. However, more than parks, those seems to have been agricultural estates that would finance the shrine. Thus in one of his dedication we read:
“ I gave thy extended gardens with trees and vineyards in the temple of Atuna. I gave thy olive trees groves in the town of On. I gave thy gardeners and many workmen to make Egyptian oil and supply thy noble temple lamps. I gave thy trees, wood, dates palms, incense and lotus, reeds, herbs and flowers from all the countries to set in front of thy visage.”
And to finance those temples Ramses the III was really very generous. As a matter of fact history reports that he gave them 107180 plots of arable land, 514 gardens, three country and 19130032 flower bouquets. It really seems that he was not stinting.

Bibliography
Scientific popularzation
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Dossier: I giardini nell'antichità in Archeo nº 69, November, pp. 50-97