•^ The Scented Qarden $2- 



is in no small part due to the skill wherewith the 

 artist has given a sense of distance. Indeed, one feels 

 one is actually in the garden. On every wall the garden is 

 depicted in two parts — in the foreground a part planted 

 with low-growing flowers fenced with wooden trellis- work 

 in front, and on the further side with a small exquisitely 

 patterned screen in stonework. Beyond this lies the garden 

 proper. The early morning breeze stirs the trees, and the 

 mist is rising from the ground. What a wonderful scene 

 it is ! Orange trees laden with fruit and flowers, oleanders, 

 palms, pomegranates, olive trees, roses and carnations, 

 as they were two thousand years ago, and many other 

 flowers. And the butterflies and birds ! The more one 

 looks at this garden scene, and it is surely one of the 

 loveliest, though one of the least known, ever depicted, 

 the more entranced one becomes. So great is the artist's 

 skill that not merely does one gaze through his magic 

 casement into a scented garden of two thousand years ago, 

 but one is transported into the heart of it. 



As one wanders along this fresco one realizes something 

 of the beauty of the gardens of far-off days, and one's 

 thoughts fly to those still older gardens for which Egypt 

 was famed over three thousand years ago. In the gardens 

 of the ancient civilizations, shade, scent and water — water 

 both seen and heard — were the essential features. Such 

 were the gardens of ancient Egypt, and tomb-paintings 

 reveal to us something of their stately magnificence. They 

 excelled in the art of making gardens within gardens, and 

 we can visualize the pleasure gardens with their painted 

 pergolas covered with vines, their glorious water-gardens, 

 the avenues of scented shrubs and their stately summer- 

 houses. To the ancient Egyptian the flower of flowers 



