Gardens of ancient Egypt and were sometimes enclosed by walls. Temple gardens were used to raise certain vegetables for ceremonies, Palace gardens first appeared in Egypt just before the Middle Empire (2035–1668). These gardens were very large in scale, and laid out in geometric patterns. The ponds of palace gardens were enormous and numerous. In the second millennium B.C., the garden pond of King Sneferu was large enough for boats rowed by twenty oarsmen. The rulers of ancient Egypt, such as Queen Hatshepsut (1503–1482 BC), and Ramses III (1198–1166 BC) used pots to bring back to Egypt new kinds of trees and flowers discovered
Cup of the Ptolemies E. Babelon proposed the more general idea that the cup had been carved during "the time of the Ptolemies"a wide range stretching from 305 to 30 BC. However, there is no particular evidence for this, and other scholars, such as John Henry Middleton or Martin Conway, suggest that the cup was carved later, during the first or second centuries AD by Romans. Determining the exact date of the cup has been problematic largely because similar pieces are rare, making any possible comparison difficult. The exact history of the cup is largely unknown, although Conway suggests that the cup probably belonged