Paradeisos
The word Paradeisos ( Greek παράδεισος “zoo”, “park”; Latin paradisus; Middle Persian and Hebrew pardēs ) was adopted by the Greeks from the Avestian pairi-daēza (literally “delimited area”). The Greek word originally referred to Persian royal gardens , in the biblical context also to "God's gardens". In the Septuagint , the Greek translation of the Torah , it refers to the Garden of Eden, among other things .
precursor
Hannes Galter and Lutz Käppel want to derive the Persian Paradeisos from the Assyrian royal gardens . Since the 11th century BC Trees and bushes were planted in the Assyrian palace gardens and exotic animals were kept. Inscriptions show that securing prosperity and fertility was a primary task of Assyrian kings. This was expressed in the palace garden, which was also a recreational area. The interest in horticulture and exoticism is perhaps also due to the fact that such gardens were an image of the empire, in which flora and fauna from all over the Assyrian empire were presented. Sennacherib had several gardens built in Nineveh , possibly a closed game park on the Tigris . Ceremonial hunts probably took place there, as they were later depicted on reliefs from Assurbanipal in Khorsabad.
Persia
The Achaemenids further developed the palace garden into an ornamental garden, in which the royal residences were located, and also created wildlife parks. The image of the king on horseback hunting with a bow and arrow is particularly common in Sassanian iconography.
Greece and Rome
The knowledge of Persian royal gardens came to Greece through Xenophon . Among the Greeks, the foreign word paradeisos initially referred to those oriental, especially the Persian, parks surrounded by a wall. As a result, a paradeisos was then a large, enclosed park as part of Hellenistic and Roman-Imperial palace complexes, which also served to keep wild animals available for hunting.
Old Testament and Christianity
Over time, the notion of the Paradise Garden was also applied to “God's gardens” that had a religious reference. The expression paradise for the Garden of Eden is derived from Paradeisos . Paradeisos thus became part of the religious language.
In the New Testament , unlike in the Old Testament , the term appears only rarely (Luke 23.43; 2 Corinthians 12.4; Apocalypse 2.7). Paradise later also referred to the narthex , a porch of churches.
See also
literature
- Bernard Andreae : “On the pear tree” - gardens and parks in ancient Rome, in the Vesuvius cities and in Ostia. Cultural history of the ancient world Volume 66. von Zabern, Mainz 1996, ISBN 3-8053-1854-5 .
- Leigh-Ann Bedal: The Petra Pool Complex. A Hellenistic Paradeisos in the Nabataean capital. 2nd Edition. Gorgias Press, Piscataway (NJ) 2004, ISBN 1-59333-120-7 .
- W. Fauth: The royal gardener and hunter in the Paradeisos. In: Persica, 8, pp. 1-53 (1979).
- Hannes D. Galter and Lutz Käppel: Paradeisos. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 9, Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01479-7 , Sp. 306-306.
- Christoph Höcker : Metzler Lexicon of Ancient Architecture. 2nd Edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-476-02294-3 , pp. 189f.