The Garden of the Hesperides

Nowadays Morocco's citrus production is concentrated in the Sousse valley around Taroudant and we saw no orange groves on our trip to the NW; but from classical times until recent history they were grown there and exported through Tangiers which is why small oranges are not called "mandarins" in Europe but "tangerines".

Hence the Louka estuary is important in the Hercules myth. This dates from a time before Greece had citrus fruit.  (They were only introduced to southern europe in the middle ages.) Hercules is sent for his 11th labour to steal 3 golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides. Tradition placed Lixus on the 1st bend of the Louka where it still stands and the palace of Antaeus on an island in the river with the garden of the Hesperides behind it. There are no islands now. Save for the river itself, which is tidal, the whole area has silted to marsh and water meadow where cows are grazed.

Antaeus could not die as long as he was touching his mother Gaia, the earth. Hercules managed to kill him by holding him up over his head so no part of him could touch the ground. There is a classical bronze of this recovered from Lixus in Tetouen museum which will presumably be returned when the Golf Resort is built. 

The grove was tended by the Hesperides, the daughters of Atlas and variously numbering 3 or 7 depending on the version of the myth. These are the daughters of evening and take pleasure in singing.

The golden apples feature large in two other greek myths. Melanion drops three, one at a time, to slow Atalanta who stops to pick them up in a footrace so that he can marry her, (all previous suitors lost and were put to death); and Eris gave one to Paris to award to the most beautiful goddess. He accepted Aphrodite's bribe of the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, leading to the abduction of Helen and the Trojan war.

 

                                         

In  Norse mythology they are the source of the Norse Gods' perpetual youth.

The myth of the magical apple-isle of the West has persisted into northern - european mythology and folk tale, in particular as Avalon, and also perhaps for the naming of Applecross on the approach to the Western Isles.

Another strand of scholarship equates the Garden of the Hesperides with the Sousse Valley and the Golden Apples with Argan fruit but although I would like to be living in it I find it less persuasive.