Garden Design in Ancient Egypt

Egypt’s main artery was the Nile, the river that ‘fed’ the narrow valley that is the Nile delta, depositing rich fertile silt on the land and providing life giving water. This rich fertile silt supported agriculture and was used to ameliorate the sandy garden soil. The improved soil can still be identified as Nile mud in planting pits on archaeological sites where gardens existed. The silt mud was also mixed with chopped straw and moulded to form mud bricks for garden walls.

Egypt had been inhabited by a nomadic people but they became sedentary using basic agricultural techniques to provide food.  Once agriculture was established and providing food to support growing communities’ the early Egyptians turned as well to aesthetic considerations and religion. Gardens become part of both of these in their non-nomadic culture.              

So what were the catalyst for the Egyptians desire to design and build gardens? The answer lays in Mummification, festivals, and offerings for the dead. Gardens were used as the space to grow the necessary plants for these. We also know that the atheistic value of a garden was important and the very act of having water and keeping it cool was a show of status and wealth. The art of mummification although a crude and basic practice at first needed plant material to provide essential oils for the mummification process; these were provided in gardens, although not all were grown in Egypt, some were imported from the ‘Land of Punt’ (Somalia). The Egyptians loved flowers and flowering plants and they played a major part in every day life. Bellinger describes this when he says ‘Flowers were frequently used by the ancient Egyptians for special occasions such as festivals, funerals and to decorate the tombs of pharaohs and gods. Depending on the occasion, the flowers were combined into bouquets, garlands and collars’. When Howard Carter opened the tomb of Tutankhamun he discovered the remains of a floral tribute on the coffin of the boy king and a floral collar inside the inner coffin.

When death occurred, the body of the Pharaoh, their family, priests or the wealthy would be prepared, mummified and taken to a tomb. The upper chambers were decorated with wall paintings and a shrine in the form of a statue of the deceased would be displayed. The body would be lowered down a shaft into a lower chamber and then sealed. The relatives and friends of the deceased would on a daily basis bring offerings to place in the upper chamber; these offerings would consist of food and flowers, needed so they thought when the dead returned each night from the afterlife to their tombs. Again some of these offerings would be produced in gardens and tomb gardens. At times once the tomb had been filled and the offerings placed inside they would be totally closed and concealed.

Gardeners were important workers in view of the fact they were able to produce plant material and ensure it survived in very hostile conditions; floods, very high temperatures during the day and cold at night, dry scorching sandy winds and sandy soil. Egyptian gardeners also needed to be able to build mud walls and learn the art of irrigation. As today good gardeners were sought after. But life was hard as a gardener. Hobhouse describes this. ‘The garden labour had a tough life, transporting soil, watering, building dams with sand and mud, removing sand blown in from the desert and digging and fertilizing’. A piece of verse was found inscribed in a tomb that summed up the life of a gardener.

‘The Gardener carries a yoke

His shoulders are bent as with age:

There is a swelling on his neck, and it festers.

In the morning he waters vegetables,

The evening he spends with his herbs,

While at noon he has toiled in the orchard.

He works himself to death

More than all other professions’.

Until 330BC when Alexander invaded Egypt, its isolation; protected by the desert and the defensible Nile meant that it was able to become stable economically and politically. The Egyptians grew and prospered in their welcome isolation. Without war and with a stable economy, money was available to be spent on gardens and labour was plentiful. Egypt’s isolation however had the effect of stifling progression in garden design for over one thousand years. Garden design styles tend to change relatively quickly, but in Egypt, excavation discoveries, tomb paintings and writings on papyrus or stone show no changes in garden design.

Egyptian society was highly ordered and structured, this transposed down into their gardens which were designed along the same lines. The garden space was  geometric and mainly laid out symmetrically, helping irrigation, which could be carried out more easily with irrigation channels running in straight lines. The water brought into the garden could be moved far more quickly than if it had to negotiate bends and turns. The garden irrigation systems were controlled by sluice gates and the garden at times would be flooded to ensure adequate water penetration.

S. Harmer 2011The garden painting from Nebamuns tomb.

One of the most useful representations that exist of an Egyptian garden is the wall painting from Nebamun’s tomb, discovered in Thebes. The painting which is in the British Museum dates from c.1380 BC and has a long and interesting history in its own right. This painting shows the basic layout and design of an Egyptian garden. The important central pool being a vital component, it housed the fish required for food and cooled the air, which in turn kept down biting insects.  Water was extremely important and was the key to Egyptian life. The fish painted in Nebamun’s pool can be identified as Mullet and puffer fish. Ducks and geese can also be seen that again provided food in the shape of meat and eggs. Egyptian garden pools were sometimes designed as T- shaped, as this was the shape of the dock that the boat taking you to the afterlife would moor at. Also the T-shape was the shape of the table that funeral offerings were placed at, so this design was highly symbolic.

S. Harmer 2011

The plant seen in the pool is the Lotus flower; the Lotus was particularly revered and was held in high esteem; a very important plant with religious significance, as described by Bellinger, ‘The Lotus was a sacred plant, the Nymphaea caerulea. The flower was sacred and even the root could be made into bread. The blue flower was a powerful symbol of life and re-birth. The Lotus featured everywhere in tombs and temples, and was also used as perfume’. Around the edge of the pool can be seen black Nile mud in a border with flowering plants, they were used for festivals, offerings and also had purely aesthetic quality.

S.Harmer 2011The garden painting from Nebamuns tomb.

This part of the painting shows the trees that were grown in Egyptian gardens to supply fruit and provide shade. These would include date palm, doum palm, Sycomore fig, Pomegranate and olive. The tree in the middle is the date palm, the hot sun producing sweet dates. Trees were planted in straight lines and in some gardens in rows according to their species. Trees were also used as windbreaks around gardens but both had to be built and planted higher than the flood level of the Nile.

The garden painting does not show a wall but all Egyptian gardens would have had one; constructed from Nile mud bricks. The garden wall served several purposes, to keep unwanted people, wild animals, including crocodiles out of the garden. They also provided a barrier to the sand, as due to Egypt’s climate; drying winds, scorching heat and the desert, sand was moved around freely and was deposited everywhere. Built high enough they could also help provide shade. Sand penetrated everywhere; many Egyptian mummies show various degrees of tooth decay and abscess caused by teeth being worn down by sand in the food.

S. Harmer 2011

Ancient Egyptian skull showing a severe abscess  

This illustration shows the terrible abscess that was caused by the tooth being worn down by sand. The infection ate into the bone and must have caused terrible pain.

So what influence has the ancient Egyptian style of garden design had through history and today? Firstly the Egyptian garden in its formal style was the forerunner of the Persian garden, and so then the Moorish gardens of Spain. The idea of the geometric shaped garden along with a protective wall has continually been used since ancient Egyptian times. The wall was only less important at times in garden design history, for example in the period of the English landscape movement when the ha-ha ‘concealed the bounds’. The importance of the Egyptian legacy is described by Hobhouse ‘The ancient gardens of Egypt, visually familiar from tomb paintings, have a particular interest for gardeners today. The functional irrigation system that the Egyptians perfected, using the flood waters of the Nile, inspired the garden patterns found throughout the emerging civilized world. By the second millennium BC the Egyptian idea of a garden had spread to the Levant, through both military conquest and trade, and into Mesopotamia, influencing garden development on geometric lines’.

The Egyptian pyramid also influenced English garden design; some were designed and built in the 18^th century as garden architecture, in gardens built in the Augustan period of the English landscape movement. The pyramid at Rousham designed by William Kent is thought to have been inspired by Vanbrugh’s pyramid at Stowe which was lost in the 19^th century. The pyramid in the English landscape garden was designed like the ionic temple for example to symbolize and represent the ancient and classical world. The temple in the illustration is at Rousham and was built as a view point over the river Cherwell below it.  

S. Harmer 2010

Kent’s pyramid at Rousham

Pyramids built in landscape gardens tended to be designed at a far steeper angle than the originals. The angle of the sides was greatly accentuated, maybe for a far more dramatic affect or possibly to gain height and effect without taking up a lot of material for its construction, so the reason may simply have been economic.   

At Chiswick house we see stone sphinx guarding the entrance to the villa and garden. The sphinx was thought to protect and guard your property and of course again it symbolised the connection with the ancient world.

S. Harmer 2011

The Sphinx guarding the entrance to Chiswick house.

Another Egyptian feature that was used in many gardens was the obelisk and again it was designed and built to connect the ancient world with the garden and show the education and understanding of the owner. The ancient world was so revered. The Egyptian influence in English garden design is also thought to symbolise the masonic tendencies of the garden owner and the designer, the sphinx for example having significance for masons.

S. Harmer 2011

The illustration shows the connection with the classical world and the ancient world, both being represented. There have been other connections with ancient Egypt in the form of topiary pyramids and turf pyramids, designed and used in the Italian renaissance through to the English renaissance and the French baroque. A garden design style that started a few thousand years before Christ was thought to be born has had relevance and significance in garden design ever since it was conceived.