Archaeologists have discovered the remains of an almost 4,000-year-old model garden outside a tomb in the ancient Egyptian capital of Thebes, the antiquities ministry said on Wednesday.
The find was made by a Spanish team in the Draa Abul Nagaa necropolis across the Nile from the modern-day city of Luxor, the ministry confirmed.
The model garden has been dated back to a time known as ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (2134–1690 BC), an epoch which particularly enjoyed a resurgence of art, literature, and monumental building projects. It was also a time when the pharaohs’ secured military and political security and vast agricultural and mineral wealth, the nation’s population and religion flourished.
The three-by-two-metre garden consisted of equally divided square plots each around 30 centimetres across, and was found in an open courtyard outside a Middle Kingdom tomb.
The garden “probably had a symbolic meaning and must have played a role in the funerary rites,” the ministry cited the head of the Spanish archaeology team, Jose Galan, as saying.
“The like has never been found in ancient Thebes.”
Thebes, known to the ancient Egyptians as Waset, was an Egyptian city located east of the Nile around 800 kilometres south of the Mediterranean. Its ruins lie within the modern Egyptian city of Luxor, and was the main city of the fourth Upper Egyptian nome. In the times of the New Kingdom it was the capital of Egypt.
The ministry’s head of ancient Egyptian antiquities, Mahmoud Afifi, said the tiny square plots each probably contained different species of plants and flowers.
“In the middle there are two elevated spots for a small tree or bush,” the ministry cited him as saying.
“At one of the corners, the root and the trunk of a 4,000 year old small tree have been preserved to a height of 30 centimetres.
“Next to it, a bowl was found containing dates and other fruits, which could have been presented as an offering.”
In ancient Egypt, the deceased were traditionally surrounded by objects that they had enjoyed in life, so they could continue to enjoy them in the afterlife.
The team also discovered a small mud-brick temple attached to the tomb containing three stone slabs, one of which contained a dedication to the ancient Egyptian deities Montu, Ptah, Sokar and Osiris.
The Draa Abul Naga necropolis is located near the famed Valley of the Kings, where many of the pharaohs were buried. Historians suggest that this cemetery could also have been used as a royal Necropolis for the kings of Egypt’s Seventeenth Dynasty.
Last month a separate team of archaeologists discovered several 3,500 year old mummies and more than 1,000 funerary statues.
