The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-07-15
AN EGYPTIAN GARDENER.
The Tomb of Nekht, and What it Shows

diaries, notes and copies of hieroglyphic
 inscriptions which were made early in
 the present century by certain MT.
 Robert Hay, of Linpium during a resi-
 dence of nearly thirteen years in the Nile valley. From these manuscripts it
 appears that he spent much time at
 Thebes, in Upper Egypt, where he de-
 voted nearly all his energy to the inves-
 tigation of it's ancient monuments His
 many portfolios of beautiful drawings
 bear witness to the fact that he was also
 a very enthusiastic antiquarian, and,
 like most travellers in Egypt during the first half of the present century, he be- ] guiled his time occasionally by digging | for and opening up ancient painted | tombs Among others that he discov- cred al Thebes was one belonging to a
 man named Nekht, who held under | Thothmes III, and about 1500 B. C., the
 office of head gardener of the gardens
 attached to the Temple of Karnak. | There are copies of some of the wall paintings in this tomb among MT. Hays | papers, and in his diary he roughly
 notes the position of the tomb in rela l tion to neighboring buildings. Some of | these buildings mentioned by Hay are still standing, and though the tomb had | long since been filled up again with des- ert sand and debris from the rocks above, so that not a vestige appeared | above ground they served as a clew to its whereabouts when Lord Northamp- ton, Dr. Spiegelberg and the writer came to explore the site last winter. Within three days of beginning opera tions we had, with the aid of dozen Arabs, dug down to the entrance of the
 tomb, and another two days sufficed to
 clear it.
 Like most tombs of the same period
 at Thebes, that of the gardener Nekht is excavated in the rocky hills bordering the valley of the Nile on the west and overlooking the great expanse of culti- vated land known as the Theban Plain.
 A vertical cutting of the rock has been
 made so as to form kind of rough fla
 cade; in the center of this has been cut
 a doorway with jams and lintel bearing
 lieroglyphic inscriptions giving prayers
 for the dead. This doorway leads into a small mortuary chapel, the walls of
 which are elaborately painted with scenes illustrative of the life of Nekht. At the inner end and opposite the en- trance to the tomb is another doorway giving access to small chamber or shrine, in the floor of which a vertical shaft or mummy pit leads to the sarco- phagus chamber in which once reposed the body of the Thebah gardener.
 On the left hand wall of the small chapel is charming little painted scene representing Nekht's private house, a mud-brick, two-storied edifice, white washed on the outside, with a great wooden front door. To the left of the house is depicted the garden. surround ed by shady trees and with a tiny canal running down the axis of it. This little canal feeds two small ponds in which white and blue lowered water lilies flourish; it also served the purpose of bringing water into the garden for irri gating it. Two men with yokes across their shoulders and waterpots attached to them are shown diligently watering the plants. On the south side of the house is an arbor of trellisw work, over which vines have been trained. The trees which lined the garden were not feathery ate-palms, but full-foliaged sycamore-fg trees, under whose dense growth, Nekht says, "he cooled himself during the heat of summer, and breathed the air of the sweet north wind.' ..-
 A list of trees grown in the garden of one of Nekht's contemporaries has come down to us. It enumerates sweet-date and dum-palms, common red and green fig trees, persea and olive trees, henna, yo, vines, apples and tamarisk trees. This list is preserved on wall of the tomb of superintendent of the state grana- ries at Thebes, and beneath it is a charming little painting showing the owner of the garden in a boat on a pond with an inscription by the side of it ex- plaining that "he floats on his lake and cools himself under his trees while he contemplates his avenues and reckons up all the good things which he had made on the earth"
 These gardens of private individuals however, were humble in the extreme compared to the great garden at Kar- nak, of which Nekht had charge. A plan of it has fortunately been preserved on a wall of the tomb of another Theban official It shows that the garden was nearly square and surrounded by high embattled walls. The principal entrance faced the river, and was guarded by a porters lodge. In the center was the vineyard the vines being trained on trelliswork supported by brick or stone pillars. Around the garden immediate ly inside the embattled walls, was an avenue of date and dum-palms and in side this again was row of sycamores; palms were planted also on either side of the vineyard, and in the spaces be- tween were beds for the cultivation of rare exotics and tanks for aquatic plants. A hieroglyphics inscription re- cords that the whole was laid out in the time of Thothmes III, which makes it very probable that Nexrt was the de- ! signer.
 In the reign preceding Thothmes III | had been made on a small scale | to acclimatize foreign plants in Egypt | Thirty-one myrrh trees had been | brought from the Somali country and | planted in huge tubs at Der-el-Bahari. | But shortly after the accession of | Thothmes III a great number of foreign | plants were introduced into the Nile | valley and planted in the Karnak gar den. Many of them are figured on the | walls of a small chamber of the Temple | of Amen. and figured so faithfully to nature that it is not difficult to identify them There is the Florentine flag or iris, the white-fowered lilium candidum, Inc kind of or,,po +I,o