August 21, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



339 



The Fig-tree, Ficus Carica, is shown with digitate and also 

 with palmate leaves, indicating that more than one variety 

 was known to the Assyrians, while the peculiar shape of 

 its fruit is faithfully preserved. Equally unmistakable 

 is a Pine-tree, assumed to be Pinus Brutia, whether it is 

 depicted as a thick-foliaged conical mass or more conven- 

 tionalized, with separated branches each tipped by a cone. 

 A reed, supposed to be Arundo Donax, conspicuously fig- 

 ures, in two versions, in portrayals of river margins. A Lily, 

 doubtless Lilium candidum, is very beautifully interpreted, 

 as is also a composite plant which Dr. Bonavia believes to 

 have been, most probably, Hieracium pannosum. Avery 

 curious and much conventionalized plant, difficult to deter- 

 mine, he thinks may be meant for the Baobab, Adansonia 

 digitata, while of another tree, he confesses, "nothing can 

 be made. It maybe a Plum-tree, it may be an Apple-tree, 

 or something else. Both these fruit-trees were indigenous 

 in the regions south of the Caucasus and the vicinity of 

 Persia.'' 



All these attributions Dr. Bonavia has made, not by 

 means of mere guesswork, but, where the slightest doubt 

 could exist, through patient study of the monuments in the 

 British Museum and of the records of ancient Assyrian cus- 

 toms and possessions, and after consulting the best botani- 

 cal authorities in regard to the flora of the regions with 

 which he deals. 



He also discusses two other objects the identification of 

 which is less variously supported, as they seem to be fruits 

 disassociated from the plants which bore them. Lying on 

 tables or platters, among the objects offered to monarchs 

 or deities, he thinks he has identified bunches of bananas 

 and slices of melon. Certainly the forked objects repro- 

 d^uced in the illustrations of his book are good interpreta- 

 tions of banana-clusters, even to the scars left at their base 

 by the falling of the bracts ; and there seems no reason to 

 believe that this fruit may not have been imported into 

 Mesopotamia by way of the Arabian Gulf, in which case 

 it would have been a rarity well adapted to formal or sacer- 

 dotal offerings. Both the watermelon and the muskmelon 

 were doubtless also known to the Assyrians, but Dr. Bonavia 

 thinks that the crescent-shaped objects on the sculptures 

 probably represent the fruit of the latter — "some fine kind 

 of Cucumis Melo, such as are still grown in Persia at the 

 present day." With these plants, which, not including the 

 doubtful Baobab, or the tree of which nothing definite can 

 be made, are ten in number, the list of those actually pic- 

 tured by Assyrian sculptors is complete. 



But, in addition to what, in spite of their partial conven- 

 tionalism, we may call these actual portraits of plants, 

 trees much more abstractly treated, in a distinctly orna- 

 mental way are constantly seen on the monuments and on 

 the small cylinders used as seals, sometimes isolated, but 

 on the monuments usually figuring in ceremonials as con- 

 spicuous objects of adoration. These are the famous 

 " Sacred Trees," analogies to which exist in the artistic 

 remains of other ancient nations, and a reflection of which 

 is found in the story of the Garden of Eden. Among those 

 of the Assyrians Dr. Bonavia thinks that he has recognized 

 conventionalizations of four or five different trees, some of 

 which are readily identifiable, while others are less so, 

 owing to the minuteness of the work on the little seals. 

 These are the Date-tree, the 'Vine, the Pomegranate-tree, 

 the Fir-tree, and " not improbably " the Oak. But, again, 

 the Date-tree holds the most important place, and not un- 

 naturally, as, in any country where it grew, it must have 

 been especially revered in those very early times when 

 religious and superstitious customs had their origin, and 

 when "man lived by hunting and fishing and by eating 

 anything he could find growing in the forest," as well as 

 later on, when he had become semi-civilized, but, as yet, 

 led a merely pastoral, not an agricultural, life. We can 

 easily fancy the " first-comers into the plains of Chaldcca 

 finding forests of Date-trees, the sweet fruit of which, with 

 the products of their flocks, enabled them to increase and 

 multiply. We can imagine how this tree eventually became 



to these people the ' tree of life.' " And in later days they 

 must have cultivated it with diligence, for Herodotus wrote 

 that the plains of Babylon were thickly covered with Date 

 Palms, which were equally precious for the shade, for the 

 fruit and for the wood that they yielded. In still later 

 times the name of "Tadmor in the Wilderness," Palmyra, 

 indicates the local plentifulness of this tree; the shores of 

 the Dead Sea also "are said to bear unmistakable evidence- 

 of whole forests having once existed somewhere in its 

 vicinity or on the banks of its tributary rivers " ; and " Lay- 

 ard gives a plate representing conquerors cutting down the 

 Date-trees of a conquered country. This terrible way of 

 clearing a conquered land of its food-trees must have been 

 frequently practiced, and will amply account for the almost 

 total disappearance of the Date-tree from whole regions 

 where, at previous times, it must have existed abundantly." 

 Thus, as the "tree of life," as the most beneficent of their 

 possessions, and as the symbol of fertility, the Date Palm 

 won its prominent place in the emblematical cult of the 

 Assyrians, and is pictured as an object of worship under 

 various singular and decorative, but readily recognizable, 

 forms. 



Very important also was the Vine to these ancient peo- 

 ple, and very frequent and beautiful are the Sacred Trees 

 formed from the elements it supplied, sometimes with wav- 

 ing branches arranged in regular rows and each tipped by 

 a bunch of grapes ; but even where it is most clearly sug- 

 gested certain elements drawn from the Date Palm are 

 usually mingled in the pattern it forms, while many more 

 purely architectural ornaments are ingenious and attractive 

 combinations of Date-tree fronds and Grape-bunches. The 

 Pomegranate is likewise easily recognized among the 

 Sacred Tree emblems ; and a very highly conventionalized 

 design, in which each branching line is tipped by three 

 cone-like objects, Dr. Bonavia believes to have been meant 

 for a Fir-tree, while a small design on a seal shows tiny 

 objects which look more like acorns than like anything else. 

 There is a variety of evidence to prove that the Assyrians 

 were doubtless acquainted with other species of Oaks be- 

 sides Quercus Libani of the Lebanon mountains ; yet, the 

 author confesses, this particular Sacred Tree may also have 

 represented a Vine with its fruit-clusters portrayed in an 

 unusual manner. 



Almost more interesting than his chapter on Sacred 

 Trees is the one in which the author discusses the origin of 

 the famous "Cone fruit," so constantly held in the hands 

 of the personages figured on Mesopotamian monuments, 

 because so many different opinions upon this question 

 have prevailed. We cannot follow him through the many 

 reasons he gives for his own belief, but can merely quote 

 this belief as in favor, not of the well-known theory that 

 the symbol represents the male inflorescence of the Date 

 Palm, but of the idea that it is a Fir-cone used for the 

 sprinkling of holy water. This idea seems to us well sup- 

 ported by the fact that the figures which hold a cone in one 

 hand hold in the other a small bucket, and seem to be per- 

 forming some act in relation to more important personages, 

 and by the fact that the custom of using Pine-cones for this 

 purpose still exists in the East. But the reader interested 

 in the transmission of symbols or in the development of 

 artistic patterns, should read this chapter of Dr. Bonavia's 

 for himself, as also the extremely interesting ones in which 

 he treats of the Lotus in art and of the origin of the ubiqui- 

 tous use, in one conventionalized version or another, of the 

 device which, when found in Mesopotamia, is called the 

 "Assyrian luck-horns." These chapters, written to prove 

 no preconceived tfeeory, but simply to register facts, 

 and, if possible, to deduct sensible interpretations from 

 them, form an excellent antidote to Professor Good- 

 year's widely read Graiiunar of the Lotus, which, de- 

 spite the erudition it reveals and the extremely valuable 

 material it brings together, must be regarded as a cleverly 

 exaggerated piece of special pleading. Surely, not from 

 the Lotus alone, but from the Lotus and many other floral 

 and non-floral originals, the decorative motives of antiquity 



