Mesopotamian Gardens

• Mesopotamia - the "land between the Rivers" Tigris and

Euphrates - comprises a hilly and mountainous northern
area and a flat, alluvial south.
• Evidence for their gardens comes from written texts,
pictorial sculpture and archaeology. In western tradition
Mesopotamia was the location of the Garden of Eden and
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Temple gardens
developed from the representation of a sacred grove;
several distinct styles of royal garden are also known

Map showing the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers

 Courtyard Gardens
• The courtyard garden was enclosed by the walls of a
palace, or on a larger scale was a cultivated place
inside the city walls.
• At Mari on the Middle Euphrates (c 1,800BC) one of
the huge palace courtyards was called the Court of the
Palms in contemporary written records. It is crossed by
raised walkways of baked brick; the king and his
entourage would dine there.
• At Ugarit (c1,400BC) there was a stone water basin,
not located centrally as in later Persian gardens, for the Nebuchadnezzar II's palace courtyard
central feature was probably a tree (date palm or
tamarisk).
• A Babylonian text from the same period is divided into
sections as if showing beds of soil with the names of
medicinal, vegetable and herbal plants written into
each square, perhaps representing a parterre design.
 Royal Hunting Parks
• On a larger scale royal hunting parks were established to hold the exotic animals and plants which the
king had acquired on his foreign campaigns. King Tiglath-Pileser I (c 1,000BC) lists horses, oxen, asses,
deer of two types, gazelle and ibex, boasting "I numbered them like flocks of sheep."
 City Garden
• From around 1,000 BC the Assyrian kings developed a style of city garden incorporating a naturalistic
layout, running water supplied from river headwaters, and exotic plants from their foreign campaigns.
• When Sargon n (722-704 B.C.) built an entirely new capital city, he had parks and orchards laid out for
his royal pleasure, where he and his family could practise hunting lions, and falconry
• It is almost certain that the slopes, an artificial lake, and a pavilion shown on the monumental relief
sculptures of Sargon were contrived to give a more interesting landscape
• A finely built altar here graces the top of a hill surrounded by a grove of fragrant pines; at the foot of
the hill, set out over the water like a boathouse is a splendid little pillared pavilion, backed by fruit trees.

Garden of Sargon II at his new capital Dur-Sharrukin

• The city garden reached its zenith with the palace design of Sennacherib (704-681BC) whose water
system stretched for 50 km into the hills, whose garden was higher and more ornate than any others,
and who boasted of the complex technologies he deployed, calling his palace and garden "a Wonder for
all Peoples".
• This was later postulated to be a prototype of the Hanging Garden of Babylon

Nineveh- Senacherib's City

 Temple Garden
• Sennacherib also built a temple of the New Year Festival within a garden, outside the walls of Assur, the
traditional capital of Assyria on the middle Tigris. Thanks to careful excavation of the root-pits, the
layout of trees or bushes was discovered by a German expedition, although the type of plant could not
be established.
• Within the central courtyard of the simple, rectangular building, as well as outside it on all four sides,
trees or shrubs had been planted very neatly in regular rows.
• They possessed large land-holdings, apparently in close proximity to the temple buildings themselves,
and those lands were cultivated as small-holdings that took turns to provide offerings to the cult,
especially dates, pomegranates and figs.
• Major temples in ancient Mesopotamia have been found decorated with semiengaged columns imitating
the trunks of date palms and the spiral-patterned trunks of a palm with inedible fruit, perhaps
Chamaerophs umilis
Hanging Gardens, Royal Gardens Design
Hanging gardens considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World and thought to
be located near the royal palace in Babylon. By the beginning of the 21st century, the
site of the Hanging Gardens had not yet been conclusively established.g Gardens,
Royal Gardens Design

Artist's re-creation of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, constructed c.

8th–6th century BCE.
Brown Brothers
Contradicting theories for the Hanging Gardens:
• Theory, popularized by of British
archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley,
suggested that the gardens were built
within the walls of the royal palace at
Babylon, the capital of Babylonia (now
in southern Iraq), and did not actually
“hang” but were instead “up in the
air”; that is, they were roof gardens
laid out on a series of ziggurat
terraces that were irrigated by pumps
from the Euphrates River.
• Traditionally, they were thought to be
the work of King Nebuchadrezzar II
(reigned c. 605–c. 561 BCE), who built
them to console his Median wife, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, 3-D reconstruction.
Amytis, because she missed the
mountains and greenery of her
homeland.
• Though some sources disagreed on who built them, a
number of descriptions concurred that the gardens
were located near the royal palace and were set upon
vaulted terraces.

• They were also described as having been watered by an

exceptional system of irrigation and roofed with stone
balconies on which were layered various materials, such
as reeds, bitumen, and lead, so that the irrigation water
would not seep through the terraces.

• Although no certain traces of the Hanging Gardens have

been found, a German archaeologist, Robert Koldewey,
did uncover an unusual series of foundation chambers
and vaults in the northeastern corner of the palace at
Babylon. A well in one of the vaults may have been
used in conjunction with a chain pump and thus was
thought perhaps to be part of the substructure of the
once towering Hanging Gardens.
• A later theory postulated that,
owing to confusion among Classical
sources, the Hanging Gardens might
well have been those constructed by
Sennacherib (705/704–681 BCE) at
Nineveh.

• This research suggested that the

gardens were laid out on a sloping
construct designed to imitate a
natural mountain landscape and
were watered by a novel system of
irrigation, perhaps making early use
of what would eventually be known
as the Archimedes screw.
This copy of a bas relief from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal (669–631 BC) at Nineveh
shows a luxurious garden watered by an aqueduct.
 Egyptian Gardens:
• Gardens were much cherished in the Egyptian times
and were kept both for secular purposes and
attached to temple compounds. Gardens in private
homes and villas before the New Kingdom were
mostly used for growing vegetables and located close
to a canal or the river. However, in the New Kingdom
they were often surrounded by walls and their
purpose incorporated pleasure and beauty besides
utility.
• While the poor kept a patch for growing vegetables,
the rich people could afford gardens lined with
sheltering trees and decorative pools with fish and
waterfowl. There could be wooden structures
forming pergolas to support vines of grapes from
which raisins and wine were produced. There could
even be elaborate stone kiosks for ornamental
reasons, with decorative statues.
• Temple gardens had plots for cultivating special
vegetables, plants or herbs considered sacred to a
certain deity and which were required in rituals and
offerings like lettuce to Min. Sacred groves and
ornamental trees were planted in front of or near
both cult temples and mortuary temples.
• As temples were representations of heaven and built
as the actual home of the god, gardens were laid out
according to the same principle. Avenues leading up
to the entrance could be lined with trees, courtyards
could hold small gardens and between temple
buildings gardens with trees, vineyards, flowers and
ponds were maintained.

Rectangular fishpond with ducks and lotus planted round with date palms and
fruit trees, in a fresco from the Tomb of Nebamun, Thebes, 18th Dynasty
• Due to the arid climate of Egypt, tending gardens
meant constant attention and depended on irrigation.
Skilled gardeners were employed by temples and
households of the wealthy. Duties included planting,
weeding, watering by means of a shaduf, pruning of
fruit trees, digging the ground, harvesting the fruit
etc.

A funerary model of a garden, dating to the Eleventh dynasty of Egypt,

c. 2009–1998 BC. Made of painted and gessoed wood, originally from
Thebes.
• The ancient Egyptian garden would have looked different from a modern garden. It would have seemed
more like a collection of herbs or a patch of wild flowers, lacking the specially bred flowers of today. Formal
boquets seem to have been composed of mandrake, poppy, cornflower and or lotus and papyrus.

The Date Palm, used The Sycamore tree was The Acacia tree was Egyptian Blue Lotus
by Egyptians for food planted for shades. Its associated with lusaaset.
and wine wood was used for and egyptian goddess
making coffins

The Persia indica tree,

The Tamarisk tree used Pomegranate introduces
same as avocado family, Cyperus paparus was used
for shade during New Kingdom
once comon in Egypt has for writing, making boat
vanished now was used as medicine
and also as food