ABSTRACT
The first chapter explores the origins of the idea of the paradisiacal instinct in the early cultures of Sumer, Egypt, Assyria, and Persia. The garden, as represented by the Tree of Life, is explicit in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the cult of the garden was similarly prominent in the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. It found its grandest exposition, however, in the Assyrian and Iranian empires forming late in the second millennium, from whom we obtain the word paradise.
