FLORA VITIENSIS, 971 
Portuguese word macoco or macaco, a monkey, the end of the nut having three black scars, which give it 
somewhat the resemblance of a monkey's face. I think it may be shown that this fruit was known in 
very early times in Egypt, and that the name is derived from a word in the old language of that country. 
In the collection of ‘Egyptian Monuments, just published by Brugsch, there is an inscription (pl. 
xxxvi.) from the tomb of a functionary who lived in the reign of Tothmes I., cirea B.c. 1650. It gives 
a list of the trees which grew in the garden of this person, with the numbers of each kind. Twenty 
species of trees are mentioned. There were ninety Sycamores, thirty-one Perseas, five Fig-trees, three 
Acacias, twelve Vines, eight Willows, ten Tamarisks, and others which cannot be clearly identified. 
Appended to the name of each tree is a determinative hieroglyphic representing a bush or tree. In three 
cases the determinative is a manifest Paim-tree. In the first of these cases the name is represented by 
a single hieroglyphic, a bunch of dates, of which the sound is known (from being phonetically written 
in other texts) to be baner; it is the Coptic benne, the Date-palm (Pheenia dactylifera). The number of 
trees of this kind in the garden was a hundred and seventy. In the next case the name is written 
phonetically mama. This was, in all probability, the Doum-palm (Hyphene eucifera), which is common 
in Egypt. There were a hundred and twenty of these trees. Of the third Palm, our horticulturist 
had only a single specimen. Its name is written phonetically mama-en-khanent. Brugsch calls it 
Hyphene Argun, which is the name of an African species of Palm. I believe it to have been the Cocoa-nut 
tree, for the reasons which follow. In the first Sallier Papyrus, page 8, there is a sort of poetical apostrophe 
to the god Thoth, the patron of scribes. In this the writer addresses his deity thus:—' O thou Palm-tree 
(mama) of sixty cubits in height, upon which are kuku (with determinative of seed or fruit) ; with khanini 
(same determinative) within the kuku ; with water within the hanini? Here it is evident that the Palm- 
tree mentioned is the same as that in Brugsch’s inscription, viz. the Palm of khonent or khanini. The 
` kuku is evidently its fruit; the Ahanini must be the kernel or flesh, within which is the well-known Cocoa- 
nut milk. The height of the tree answers well, as the ordinary growth of the Cocoa-nut Palin is stated to 
be from sixty to ninety feet. The Doum-palm is described by Pliny (xiii. 18) under the name of Cuci 
(kuki. kove)), which is in effect the same word as kuku. But the fruit of the Doum-palm differs from 
the Cocoa-nut in having no juice inside it. In Coptic, kovre means bark; and perhaps this word 
may have been applied to the nuts of both Palms, from the barky husk with which they are surrounded, 
The Copts had also the Grecized word kovxovvapia for fir-cones. Perhaps the Greek xoxkos may be radically 
the same word, though the Greeks only applied it to much smaller fruits, or berries. We need not, then, 
go to the Portuguese for the derivation of Cocoa, seeing that the identical name was applied to Palm-nuts 
by the Egyptians in the fourteenth century B.c., the date of the Sallier Papyrus. That the Cocoa-nut was 
a rarity in Egypt we may see from there being but one tree of the kind in the old gardener’s collection, 
while he had above a hundred each of the native Palms. For this reason also, as well as for the peculiar 
and refreshing character of its fruit, it appeared to the poetical scribe a worthy symbol of his patron deity." 
Setting aside the argument advanced in the ‘ Parthenon’ for an affirmative answer, I should reply—There 
is no reason why the Cocoa-nut should not have been cultivated at Thebes more than three thousand years 
ago. Some varieties of the nut will grow far inland, and Thebes is not so very far distant from the sea to pre- 
clude such a contingency : the climate would also admit of it. Again, if the Cocoa-nut could be drifted in 
modern times by the prevailing winds and marine currents from Western America to Eastern Asia, there is 
no reason why it should not have done the same three thousand years ago, when the distribution of land and 
water must have been pretty much the same as it is now, and the direction of the winds and currents was doubt- 
less not different from what we find in our days. It is therefore not unlikely that the Cocoa-nut, if known 
in Asia three thousand years ago, might have found its way to Egypt,—even Solomon's fleet having brought 
home curiosities of every description from Ceylon and other parts,—and might have been cultivated by a 
gentleman attached to horticulture. But I am not quite prepared to confirm the venture that the Mama- 
en-khanent of the catalogue of the Egyptian garden was the Cocoa-nut. The determinative appended to the 
hieroglyphic is very rude, and all one could conscientiously say is, that in outline it looks very much like 
either a Palm ora Musa. But in taking into consideration that the apostrophe in the Sallier Papyrus, page 8, 
applies to this tree, it may be granted that we have to deal with a Palm, the Musa fruit having no water 
inside. But the presence of water inside the fruit would not settle the question whether we have the real 
Cocoa-nut before us. What is popularly termed the * water” is common to all Palms when the fruit is suffi- 
ciently young, and disappears on approaching maturity. The water—to keep to the term—would probably 
not be noticed in small fruit ; and the fact that it was specially alluded to in the apostrophe would seem to imply 
that the author was speaking of a large fruit. The height of the tree mentioned in the papyrus (sixty 
cubits) tallies well with that usually attained by the Cocoa-nut tree in the tropics and near the sea; but it 
may be questioned whether that Palm would attain its full dimensions in a place situated like Thebes. I 
have seen the tree struggling for existence at the very edge of the equinoctial region, even in its favourite 
haunts in the neighbourhood of the sea—for instance, the Sandwich Islands and the Gulf of California. 
There are no other points a botanist could lay hold of, and I may therefore be permitted to guess what 
other Palm can possibly be meant by the Mama-en-khanent, The Palms of Egypt are the Date and the 
[PUBLISHED JULY 31, 1868.] 20 
