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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



cat-like head ; the Greater Ptah and the ugly yet seriously impressive 

 beetle-headed monster known as the Lower Ptah, representative of labour, 

 who is always represented as having had his eyes put out, cunningly 

 suggestive of the frequently too limited outlook of these absorbed in 

 manual labour. 



Wise-hearted men are not like the blinded devotees of the Lower Ptah, 

 who cannot see how and where their individual craft (the particular craft 

 under question at the moment being the delightful one of designing 

 gardens) fits into the scheme of all things wise and beautiful. I want to 

 show shortly that the Divine scheme of design in a garden is altogether 

 different from man's ideal, and the man who works with the Divine ideal 

 in view is not likely to be captivated by the Egyptian or the Babylonian 

 ideal, with all their august reverential awe, their mystic glamour and 

 witchery. 



I do not wish to allure anyone into even a study of these obsolete 

 deities, but I think I have said enough to prove that the ancient Egyp- 

 tians had, without the slightest shadow of a doubt, a powerful systematized 

 and wonderfully impressive potentiality as a race. You cannot sever the 

 people, their handiworks, and their religion, which is perhaps the deepest 

 and most serious impulse in man. From a Christian standpoint I quite 

 agree that we can brush away these old heathen deities with a sweep of 

 the hand ; yet we must admit their cunningness, their power upon the mind, 

 and their skill. As Ruskin has pointed out, there are very few draughts- 

 men that can even render on paper the expression of the Egyptian deities ; 

 there are many who can draw them with laborious faithfulness, but they 

 are unable to depict their subtlety of expression. We moderns, in most 

 things we take up, trend towards superficiality ; we are painfully micro- 

 scopic, but we often seem to lose the essential amidst the detail, and, 

 missing that, we miss all. 



Now let us for a moment try to transport ourselves to the precincts 

 of one of these Egyptian gardens in its setting of temples and palaces ; 

 the Nile gliding without, with its flotilla of slave-propelled ships 

 and boats, occasionally an emblazoned sail peering above the bounding 

 parapet wall ; within the weird perspective of its lagoons or water-aisles 

 fringed with whispering reeds, flags and lotus, and hemmed in with tall 

 palms, their clean erect trunks like mighty columns topped with the living 

 design of waving plumes and fruit ; the eerie cypresses relieved by the 

 richer hues of fruit and flowers, the vines aforesaid ; the deep shadowy 

 recesses relieved by the bright sunny lights, all so well planned, now 

 blended and shimmering in the cool water ; here and there a statue of some 

 god ; throughout the hush of stillness approaching to reverence ; not a 

 trace or reminder of anything sere or approaching decay ; all has been 

 removed by the ever active slaves whose lithe figures glide about in 

 their spare oriental adornments. Truly this is a place of witchery and 

 surprise, a place where you are enveloped in glamour ; you are spell- 

 bound, and this is exactly where the ancient Egyptian has triumphed ; for 

 according as a designer could thus captivate his client, so his skill ; for 

 they had garden designers in those days. Records are extant of one 

 named Nekbt, who about 1500 b.c, under Thotmes III., is said to have 

 designed the gardens of the temple of Karnak. 



