Off to botany: In the garden of Nefertiti

Your rays suckle all plants.

If you rise, they live and grow for you.

You bring about the seasons in order to let all your creations come into being: the winter time so that they cool down, the summer heat so that they feel you.” These are a few lines from the great sun hymn of Pharaoh Akhenaten from the 18th dynasty of Ancient Egypt, in which he around the year 1350 BC.

B.C. praising the god Aten.

Our homage also goes to him and his form of appearance, the sun disc, in these weeks.

For where else is there consolation in the dreadful month of February than in a few warming rays of sunshine that let Akhenaten's artists end up in blessing and caressing hands.

Ulf von Rauchhaupt

Editor in the “Science” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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In addition to the sun and his wife Nefertiti, Akhenaten loved nature, especially when it was enclosed.

In its capital, the remains of which can now be seen in Tell el-Amarna in central Egypt, archaeologists came across a number of gardens covered by desert sand.

Since the city was abandoned soon after the mysterious end of his rule but never later built over, they provide the best information about ancient Egyptian horticulture.

It has a long tradition.

A garden was depicted in the tomb of a sixth dynasty official a thousand years before Akhenaten, and the earliest surviving remains of one have been unearthed at a 12th dynasty necropolis west of Thebes.

It consists of 23 square plots, each only about a quarter of a square meter in size, in a grid of clay.

Some of the gardens at Tell el-Amarna look similar,

But why these strange lattice beds?

Well, Egypt doesn't make it easy for garden lovers.

The land is either desert or fertile land, the latter being regularly flooded by the Nile, at least in those days.

Buildings were therefore usually erected in the desert, so the first thing to do was to get potting soil for their gardens.

The subdivision may have helped to provide the different plants with optimal soil and irrigation conditions so that they could withstand the desert climate.

But what grew there?

In Kom El-Nana, archaeobotanists were able to examine the soil in the grid plots for seed, leaf and root remains.

They found traces of various useful plants: vine, olive, watermelon, turnip, basil, safflower and coriander, the seeds of which were also found in Tutankhamun's tomb and which were perhaps added as a flavoring to Egyptian beer, which had to do without hops.

But then the pharaoh's gardeners apparently also cultivated plants that initially puzzled the Egyptologists.

Among them is a wild form of the carrot

, which only produces rather woody roots unsuitable for human consumption.

There was also fibrous wild celery (

), which is poisonous in parts

, and the sleeping berry

, known as Ashwagandha in Ayurvedic medicine.

The puzzle was solved when this list was compared with the remains of plants from graves.

The ancient Egyptians were great friends of magnificent bouquets of blossoms and green plants, with which they adorned themselves, their dead, but also statues of gods and even jars of sufficiently valuable contents.

And in addition to classics such as lotus and cornflower, there are also wild celery and bright red sleeping berries.