Garden and gardener (1)

Text
In the Sumerian texts and in the Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu the man takes his bride to his garden. The garden and the Edubba - which is equated with the garden in the latter text - are the places where wisdom is received. Hence, the adorning of the bride precedes her elevation, which in turn precedes entering the garden, i.e., the union between the bride and the groom. These texts are using imagery similar to the gnostic treatise Exegesis on the Soul where the adorned bride is taken to heaven by her brother-consort; here, the garden is used as the symbol for heaven (= Garden of Paradise) and the union with the divine. As the Dumuzi-Inanna love songs depict the king as the owner of the garden, it therefore implies that one of the king’s duties was to be a gardener. This task can be seen as a parallel to that of the shepherd, to be guiding people on the right track. By being the gardener, the king was leading his people to the garden - to paradise.

As a comparison, according to Ephrem the Syrian (ca. 306-373 CE), the initial garden of paradise was originally designed for Adam/man, and was once even inhabited by the first human couple, but was then lost. This garden is simultaneously the present paradise, reopened to Adam/mankind through Christ’s words to the thief on Golgotha (Luke 23:43), but also the final paradise of eternal joy and pleasure (e.g., in Ephrem’s Hymns on Paradise 7). In Ephrem’s view, paradise was planted as a perennial “Garden of Pleasure” (5.14.6), even as a “Garden of Life” (e.g., 2.13.1; 4.6.3; 7.1.7). To this paradise, the “Bridal Chamber of Chastity” (gnwnˀ dnkpwtˀ), Adam/man is elevated to serve as a king and the supreme lord (13.3).

This Garden of Paradise as the final place for the righteous people is also alluded to in a Middle Assyrian poem Šalmaneser I (LKA 15) where Ištar leads Dumuzi’s cattle, also depicted as “their sons,” to the shepherd. He is to let them graze in his abundant pasture, described with the imagery of a verdant garden. Cattle is obviously used as a metaphor for people: they are the innocent souls following Ištar, the Soul and their mother, who are guided by her to the savior king, who will shepherd them in a garden akin to a pasture full of well-being.

Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu
Ephrem Syrus, Hymns on Paradise 2.13.1
Ephrem Syrus, Hymns on Paradise 2.6.3
Ephrem Syrus, Hymns on Paradise 5.14.6
Ephrem Syrus, Hymns on Paradise 7.1.7
Ephrem Syrus, Hymns on Paradise 13.3
LKA 15
Luke 23:43
Šalmaneser I

Bibliography

Pirjo Lapinkivi

URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0001395.php