3. - Schlösser-Magazin

conceptualisation underlying the gardens as a
whole.
Work started in 1784 on erecting the temple
of Mercury, which evidently also played on the
natural/mystic syncretism of the gods, which the
Jesuits, Freemasons and members of the secret
societies had all followed. In his publication on
the theory of garden art, Christian Cay Lorenz
Hirschfeld reported in 1785 on an “Egyptian
section, on which design work has commenced
in Schwetzingen: It is a mountain, on which
a monument to King Sesostris is to be newly
placed (…). Burials and mummies are to be
located in the vaults underneath the mountain,
and it is Charon, so they say, who is to carry the
souls of the newly dead to there. Lake Moeris is
being dug around the mountain”. 40
The memory of the Egyptian King Sesostris and
the wisdom of the Egyptians certainly played a
role in garden art in the late eighteenth-century.
In Gotha, where Freemasons and Illuminati
influenced the design of the duke’s garden,
the following was written on the subject of
the Egyptians in the genealogical “Gotha court
calendar” for 1778: “they were the first who
achieved a certain degree of correctness in the
art of putting numbers together and calculating
them. They researched the trajectories of
the stars, divided them up into certain
constellations, gave names to the signs of the
zodiac, noticed the difference between planets
and fixed stars and made the most profitable
use of this knowledge in arable farming and
in dividing time into units. The erection of
the obelisks, the gigantic stones on the highest
buildings, proves their insight into mechanics.
The division of fields, which was their usual
practice even in very ancient times, all the
channels for carrying water from the Nile,
their understanding of geometry and the land
register drawn up during the reign of Sesostris
all leave no doubt as regards their knowledge of
geography.” 41
It is only at first sight that the fact that what
Pigage built in reality was a temple to the god
40 C.C.L. Hirschfeld: Theorie der Gartenkunst. vol. 5. Leipzig 1785,
pp. 344ff
41 Gothaischer Hofkalender zum Nutzen und Vergnügen
eingerichtet auf das Jahr 1778. Gotha 1778, p. 67
VI. Interpretation of the Palace Gardens as a whole: Dr. Michael Niedermeier
Mercury appears to be in contradiction with the
Egyptian plan, given that in the minds of ancient
writers and also in Kircher’s and others to follow
him (not only the Freemasons) Mercury was
equated with the Egyptian Anubis, the god who
carried souls to the underworld. 42 In Athanasius
Kircher’s “Oedipus Aegyptiacus” (1653), the
pattern of the sephirothic tree, the heart of
the kabbalah, with its ten divine numbers or
potencies of god is developed octagonally into
the ground plan of Salomon’s temple. Allusions
to the Jesuit universal design might have played
a role in planning the temple of Mercury in
Schwetzingen. There are at least grounds for
suspecting that Kirchner, in considering the
building of the temple of Mercury, is induced
to make a deliberate allusion to Salomon’s
temple or to the astronomic and cosmological
dynastic doctrine, with Mercury in the centre
(sun) in the sense of Ptolemy, Manilius, Hyginus,
Vitruv’s architectural concepts of, or the
“Hypnerotomachia Poliphili”. 43
It is also possible that the tomb of King Moeris
may have prompted ideas for a “labyrinth”
which was “divided into twelve courts” in
accordance with the “twelve Egyptian landscapes
and full of pyramids and labyrinths (“Oedipus
Aegyptiacus” 44 ; “Turris Babel” 45 ). In the case
of Abbé Jean de Terrasson, who wrote his
“King Sethos” novel (1731) in the same vein
as “Telemachos”, as an educational novel for
the sons of princes, Mercury or Orpheus
carries the deceased into the labyrinth of the
Egyptian Kings’ Realm of the Dead next to
Lake Moeris, which is crossed by Charon, the
boatman, ferrying the dead souls. 46 Reflecting
the perceptions of the time, the Egyptian
temples were constructed as large burial
grounds with gardens, with Mercury’s cavern
42 Cf. for example: A. Kircher: Turris Babel, sive Archontologia (...)
Auspiccii Augustissimi&Sapientissimi Caesaris Leopoldi Primi
Mecoenatis. Amsterdam 1679, vol. 2, p. 139
43 Cf. on this particular point for example: Horst Bredekamp:
Vicino Orsini und der Heilige Wald von Bomarzo. 2nd revised
edition Worms 1991, p. 66; pp. 132ff.; Figs. 172 and 173;
Gernot Böhme, Hartmut Böhme: Feuer, Wasser, Erde, Luft. Eine
Kulturgeschichte der Elemente. Munich 1996, pp. 257ff
44 3 vols. Rome 1642–1654, in particular vol. 1, pp. 16ff, 189ff and
207ff
45 Amsterdam 1679, vol. 2, pp. 73ff
46 Cf. for example: Terrasson: History of the Egyptian Kings
Sethos. Translated from French to German by Matthias
Claudius. vol. 1. Breslau 1777, pp. 37 and 53
VI.
243