Paradise as a garden

         Belief in a better world from which mankind had originated and to which we would one day return, was paramount amongst the Middle Eastern societies which began to develop from around 4,000 BC. It was in the earliest known writing of mankind, that which originated in Mesopotamia during the proto-literate period, that first mention of a paradise was made: a divine garden which the gods had planted out with fruit trees, green fields and meadows.

       The English word paradise comes initially from the old Persian word 'paizidaeza' which Cyrus the Younger, ruler of the Persian empire around 500 B.C., used to describe his garden to the Spartan commander Lysander and which literally means 'walled around'. From this, the Greek `paradeisoi' became the Latin 'paradisus' and, in 1175, the middle English 'paradis', used in a Biblical passage: "God ha hive brohte into paradis". The idea of a garden in which men and women may transcend their frailty has become a concept shared by many societies which had little else in common, and has persisted despite the disappearance of many of the civilizations which adhered to it.
      The Sumerian - Babylonian Paradise, the Garden of the Gods, was an idyllic earthly garden of peace and plenty reserved solely for those who had achieved immortality. It corresponds exactly to the Homeric Elysian Fields where those favoured by the gods rested until eternity in a state of perfect bliss. The Egyptians believed that the first object to meet their eyes on entry to the world of the dead would be a beautiful and shady tree, from which a goddess would welcome them with food and water. They loved their gardens so much that a usual prayer was that after death they might return there to sit in the shade and eat the fruit of the trees they had planted.

       The Christian Garden of Eden was slightly different. It became identified with Heaven, remote and no longer obtainable since the summary ejection of Adam and Eve from it, and the doom pronounced on them that henceforth they must toil amongst thorns and thistles and eat the herbs of the field.

      The preference of mankind to rest in a beautiful garden for eternity rather than to work in it has led to repeated attempts to re-establish that paradisal situation lost at the dawn of time. The need seems universal, though not always for a single place of total bliss. Saint Paul wrote of a man caught up in the "third heaven" of paradise, whilst the paradise promised in the Koran consists of several terraces of gardens - each more splendid than the last. In the Islamic gardens of Persia and Mughal India, the terraces were often meant to correspond to the enclosures which made up the Garden of Paradise in the Koran.

        There is a Saxon version of the Latin poem 'De Phoenice' which describes paradise as an island in the east where there was no suffering and no night, where the trees bore their fruit throughout the year and where the air was filled with the sweetest of odours. In the seventh century it was reputed to be a region to the east of China, watered by the four great rivers mentioned in the scriptures. The Portuguese in Sri Lanka long considered that country to have been the original site of The Garden of Eden because of a tree which flourished there, called Tabernaemontana alternifolia, the divi-ladner, which bears poisonous fruit resembling an apple with a single bite removed, which they claimed was the Tree of Knowledge.

         Wherever paradise had been, if it ever really existed, there would have been water, there would have been shade and there would have been scented blossoms. An old Persian motto says of a garden pool: "If there is a heaven upon earth - it is here - it is here!" The Egyptians believed that gods were present in a garden because divine fragrance was manifest in the scent of flowers. They believed also, that in the cool of the day, spirits came out of their tombs to enjoy the shade and water of a beautiful garden. 

      One of the most beautiful tomb interiors of the Theban  necropolis is of a royal gardener, Senufer. The entire ceiling is painted to resemble a grape arbor, with stems, foliage and flowers climbing up the walls . Should he have been virtuous enough to have found his way to paradise, who knows but that he might have discovered it to look like that.

                                                           

If you want to know more, why not buy Gardens of the Gods, a hardback book by  Brian Taylor available on Amazon, or its e-book version Sacred Plants of the World from Neolithic Times Until the Present Day, available from Amazon Kindle.