Садово-парковое искусство государства Селевкидов

Abstract

Landscape art of the state of the Seleucid Empire, which inherited a considerable part of the broken-up Alexander of Macedon’s Empire still was not a subject of a separate research. Unlike Ptolemaic Egypt where imperial gardeners managed harmoniously to unite the landscape planning inherited from sacred groves and parks of Hellas with Ancient Egyptian tradition of regular planning, there is no reason to speak about any specific «Seleucid’s style». Nevertheless, landscape art of this dynasty has the great interest to historians of ancient art as it fills a time gap between gardens and parks of an era of Hellenism and further stages of landscape art’s history. Having inherited and having enriched the Persian paradises and Hanging gardens of Babylon, having extended the culture of the Greek policies to the East, it, further, transfers the heritage to gardeners of Parthia and Bactria, Pergamum kingdom, Roman Empire. Article investigates gardens and parks on the cultural space controlled by Seleucid’s on certain regions (Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Persia, Bactria, Syria). The main attention is devoted to the park in Daphne, the suburb of Antiochiaon- Orontes, to the biggest and best-known park of antiquity. The author builds a research both on the saved-up archaeological material, and on the written sources which not always are available in high-quality Russian translations.