NEAR EASTERN GARDENS AND THE PALACE OF ALKINOOS

Erwin Cook

Skherie represents an amalgamation of some of the distinctive features of Near Eastern cities and palaces. Here I focus on Alkinoos' Garden, which is the most important and prominent of these features. I make two basic points:

1. The walled and irrigated garden attached to Alcincous' palace is unique in Homer. Walled and irrigated gardens are also unattested in Bronze or Iron Age Greek architecture as part of a domestic building complex, but are an essential and defining component of Near Eastern palaces from the early Bronze Age onward.
2. The Garden of Alkinoos is a seasonless paradise; its closest parallel in Homer is the climate on Mount Olympus and Elysium.

This description may owe something to Near Eastern traditions of otherworldly paradises, such as Dilmun and the Garden of Eden, although again an analogy can be drawn with suitable caution to the Paradeisos gardens of Near Eastern rulers. Its closest Greek parallel is the fresco series at Pylos, which portrays the megaron as a earthly paradise in which the enthroned wanax is implicitly identified as a deified hero presiding over eternal sacrifice and feasting.

If the analogy to Pylos is correct, then it would seem that traditions of such gardens already reached Greece during the Bronze Age, quite possibly by way of Minoan Crete which seems to have exerted an especially powerful cultural influence on Pylos among the mainland palatial centers. To strengthen the case for seeing the Garden of Alkinoos as a Near Eastern Paradeisos, I note that the palace building itself has some features that are best understood in comparison to Near Eastern prototypes.

3. The door to Alkinoos' palace is flanked by a pair of animated gold and silver statues of guard dogs.

The use of magical statues to guard the ruler's palace is unattested in Iron-Age Greece but common in the Near East, where they are animated by spells. The only close Greek parallels belong to the Bronze Age, and include the Lion Gate at Mycenae, and the fabulous griffins flanking the throne in the megaron at Pylos.

4. Within the megaron, golden youths stand on pedestals holding torches to light the room.

Freestanding male statues of this scale are unattested in Greece before the late seventh century and were not used as household decorations before the Hellenistic period.

5. The walls of Alkinoos' palace are said to be of bronze with a blue cornice or frieze running about it.

This description could provide a somewhat distorted memory of the blue glazed brick in which the Babylonians specialized and which was also a popular feature of Assyrian and Persian palatial architecture, as were bronze clad doors.