Gardens and Gardeners of the Ancient World: History, Myth and Archaeology

362 Pages·2016·37.08 MB·English

by  Linda Farrar

To the memory of my sister Jeanette
Windgather Press is an imprint of Oxbow Books Published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by
OXBOW BOOKS
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and in the United States by
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© Windgather Press and L. Farrar 2016
Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-909686-85-4
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-909686-86-1
Kindle Edition: ISBN 978-1-909686-87-8
PDF Edition: ISBN 978-1-909686-88-5
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Oxbow Books is part of the Casemate group Front cover images: (centre) Garden fresco, House of the Marine Venus, Pompeii;
(flanking) detail of fresco with garden plants, House of the Golden Bracelet, Pompeii; (bottom) fragment of a tomb-painting in
Nebamun’s estate garden © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Picture Credits
Acknowledgements
Time-Chart
Preface
1. Egyptian Gardens
2. Gardens of Ancient Mesopotamia and the Near East
3. Gardens of the Greek Bronze Age: Minoan and Mycenaean Cultures
4. Greek Gardens and Groves of the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic
Periods
5. Etruscan Gardens
6. Roman Gardens
7. Byzantine Gardens
8. Islamic and Persian Gardens
9. Medieval Gardens
10. Conclusions
Select Bibliography
List of Illustrations
1. Pomegranate tree, mosaic detail, Umm Al-Rasas, Jordan
2. Sacro-Idyllic scene
3. The Egyptian fertility god Min seen in his temple
4. Detail of Osiris in white mummy wrappings
5. Barley seeds were sown in wooden or ceramic Osiris Beds
6. Circular tree/plant pits for a sacred grove beside the pyramid of Pharaoh Sneferu, Dahshur
7. Reconstruction of three funerary temples at Deir el-Bahari
8. Relief depicting the transport of incense trees from Punt
9. ‘The Botanical Garden’, Karnak Temple
10. Hathor emerging from the side of a mountain through papyrus
11. Middle Kingdom relief depicting water-carriers and gardeners
12. Gardeners pick cucumber-like melons; the lettuce symbol of the fertility god Min
13. Detail of a vintage scene, a process undertaken in many gardens
14. Figurative hieroglyphs
15. Wooden model of a part of a house and garden
16. A flower filled garden around a well stocked fish pool at Amarna
17. Plan of the house and garden of Meryre, High Priest of Amarna
18. Sycomore fig tree with tree goddess dispensing nourishment for eternity
19. Plan of Sennefer’s garden. Tomb of Sennefer, Thebes
20. Doum palm tree (Hephaene thebaica). Silsila, Upper Egypt
21. Argun palm tree (Medemia argun). Tomb of Pasedu, Deir el-Medinet
22. Visitors arrive through the garden. Tomb of Neferhotep, Thebes
23. Flame coloured flowers of Pomegranate (Punica granatum), Cyprus
24. Ipuy’s house and garden. Tomb of Ipuy, Thebes
25. Carob tree represented in the Tomb of Menena, Thebes
26. Nebamun’s fruitful garden, Tomb of Nebamun, Thebes
27. Irrigation channels provide water for a row of trees and flowers next to a crop of wheat
28. Details of flowers painted in the Tomb of Ramesses III, Thebes
29. Nakht, the court florist, with one of his finest bouquets
30. The River Euphrates and the Mesopotamian Plain, seen from Syria
31. Map of Mesopotamia and the Levant
32. Seal stone depicting divinities and a snake on either side of a sacred tree
33. Seal stone from Mari
34. Ninhursag (Ki) the Sumerian goddess of vegetation and fecundity
35. Detail of the goddess Inanna and her symbolic standard of reeds
36. Detail from a large fresco from Mari
37. Akkadian gardeners tending trees and irrigating the plants in the garden
38. Impression from a seal stone depicting women in a garden picking dates