Basaad M. Mhayyal

:تهدف المحاضرة الى أن يتعرف الحضور على أهمية

ماقدمته حضارة وادي الرافدين للثقافة االوربية.

يطلع الحضور على وصف وتحليلصور ورمز الحديقة الرافدية في

شعر كل من جوسر وتنيسون.

"In this Mesopotamia between the river Tigris and Euphrates, Paradise did

stand."

( George Abbot, A Briefe Description of the Whole Worlde (1599

"When you open your eyes again, everything has changed. The hanging-lamp dazzles you, striking brilliant highlights

from the yellow brick walls. The shadows are blacker, more sharply defined, like those in old monochrome

photographs. The smell of Nebuchadnezzar's perfumed gardens to the North fizzes in your nostrils, almost (but not quite( obscuring the underlying stench of the city itself ….

Andrew Whitmore, “Babylonian Nights” (1998)

Mesopotamia is situated in “the most fertile expanse in all the Near East” known as the Fertile Crescent, a crescent-shaped region

stretching from Palestine, northward along the Mediterranean coast to Syria, eastward through

Mesopotamia, and southward along the Tigris and Euphrates to the Arab Gulf.

Sources of our knowledge of ancient Mesopotamian gardens :

The first of these two sources includes the unearthed treasures of clay tablets, reliefs, cylinder

seals and the remains of ancient Mesopotamian cities. The second source comprises the records that

non-Mesopotamians had made about those gardens.

These factors deeply affected the Mesopotamian civilization in general. These factors are

agriculture, geography,

religion.

At very early stages of the development of Mesopotamian culture, trees were made to stand

for life and were represented as such on Sumerian reliefs and seals. Archeologists refer to

this recurrent image of the tree in ancient Mesopotamia art as “the Tree of Life” Of all the trees that grew in ancient Mesopotamia, it was the date palm in particular that featured as the

tree of life in many of the artistic relics of the country. The palm was also associated with

wisdom. In a poem written in 100 BC, a poet said:O palm tree of wealth…

Endowed with all wisdom, jewel of gold,You are as stable as the earth.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)

Chaucer was the first known English poet to deal with the Mesopotamian garden imagery and symbolism as part of the subject matter of poetry. Several times does Chaucer refer to it as a paradise:Ther is no place in paradysSo good inne for to dwelle or beAs in that gardyn.

Chaucer’s garden description is equally endowed with fertility, variety and fluvial imagery:

A gardyn saw I ful of blosmy bowesUpon a ryver, in a grene mede,There as swetnesse everemore inow is,With floures white, blewe, yelwe, and rede,And colde welle-stremes, nothyng dede,That swymmen ful of smale fishes lighte,With fynnes rede and skales sylver bryghte.

Chaucer immediately introduces the image of the Mesopotamian garden by mentioning the

presence of tremendous joy, and the absence of disease and old age:

Th’air of that place so attempre wasThat nevere was ther grevaunce of hot ne cold;There wex ek every holsom spice and gras;No man there may waxe sek ne old;

Yit was there joye more a thousand foldThan man can telle; ne nevere wolde it nyght,

But ay cler day to any manes syghte. This garden, as Muriel Bowden comments, suggests “the Garden of Eden which man may not now enter except in dreams.

Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)In The Princess (1847( he reiterates the futility

of the Edenic vision and the dreams of paradise, but at the same time describes them as

indispensable stepping-stones on the road to a nobler end. Princess Ida’s objective to restore

this vision in her society is met with nothing but failure, but it ultimately gives her the wisdom she needs to redefine her goals and work for a better

and more practical good.

Ida “hopes to give back to women the individual Edens they have lost.” Ida’s project to found a college for women “involves the creation

of a new society, a world that is specifically utopian.”

Tennyson compares her to Semiramis, “The foundress of the Babylonian wall”. What both

women have in common is their firm determination to assume control and leadership and to provide mural fortification, symbolizing

the desire for withdrawal, and prevent intrusion. Semiramis, the Assyrian queen is also

introduced as a “princess.”

بالدي وإن جارت علي عزيزة

وأهلي وإن ضنوا علي كرام

Sources:1. Abbot, George. A Brief Description of the Whole World. A facsimile of the 1599 London edition. New York: Da Capo Press, 1970.2. “The Ancient Times: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.” URL:http://tqjunior.thinkquest.org/5821/baby.html. Retrieved October 21, 2010.

3 .Bennett, H. S. Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.

4 .Carr, Arthur J. “Tennyson as a Modern Poet.” Critical Essays on the Poetry of Tennyson. Ed. John Killham. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960, pp.41-64.

5“ .Hanging Gardens of Babylon.” Burst Media, 1999. URL:http://unmuseum.mus.pa.us/hangg.htm. Retrieved October 21, 2009.

6“ .Darwin's Imagery: The Tree and the Tree of Life.” The Victorian Web. URL:http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/darwin/darwin7.html. Retrieved March 7, 2011..