For we must bear in mind that the greater number of garden pictures known to us are taken from tombs.

To Nature the dweller in the Nile valley linked all that was dear to him: his happiest fetes, poetry, and love - all were bound up with the garden and its products, especially flowers. Few Oriental nations can think of a festival without flowers, but nowhere are they so completely a part of human life, and so essential, as in [Ancient] Egypt.

In the religion of the Medes and Persians the cult of trees plays an important part, and with them, as with Assyrians, the symbol of eternal life was a tree with a stream at its roots. Another object of veneration was the sacred miracle tree, which within itself contained the seeds of all.