SAFFRON: ITS HISTORY, CULTIVATION AND USES. 57 



spread acquaintance with Saffron; indeed, it would be difficult to point out any other 

 plant the names of which occur in an equal number and variety of languages.* 



In Canticles IV. 14. Saffron E3"|5, Karkom is named but it may have been 

 an imported drug, like the spices named in the context. There is no other 

 evidence that Saffron was cultivated in Syria and Palestine in the time of Solomon. 



We know it to have been grown in Syria soon after the Christian Era (see 

 references in LiJiJ s Aramaiscke Pflanzennamm, p. 215, which speak of whole fields 

 of Kurkama in Syria). 



Its occurrence as a cultivated plant in Syria was also referred to in 1582 by 

 Hakluyt (English Voiages, &c, Vol. II.), as follows, "Saffron groweth fifty miles 

 from Tripoli, on an high hyll called in those parts Gasian, so as there you may 

 learn at that part of Tripoli the value of the pound, the goodnesse of it, and the 

 places of the vent. But it is said that from that hyll there passeth yerely of that 

 commodity fifteen moiles laden, and that those regions notwithstanding lacke 

 sufficiently of that commodity." The author goes on to say that its reputed 

 introduction to Saffron Walden was by the agency of a pilgrim, who stole a 

 "head" of Saffron, and hid it in a hollow place in his Palmer's staff which he 

 had purposely prepared. 



There is no evidence of the acquaintance of the ancient Egyptians with Saffron 

 either as a drug or as a cultivated plant. In the medical Papyrus published by Ebers 

 a word occurs, Matet, ^J^ **£ several times shewn by the <*£«. to be a plant. Stern 

 in his Glossary renders it by the Coptic word MC-0-SAO. which modern lexicographers 

 have erroneously rendered "Crocus hortensis," or Saffron; instead of Safflower, or 

 Carthamus, which was used in ancient Egypt. 



The following stories of Saffron in Egypt were probably invented to bear out the 

 untenable derivation by some Greek lexicographers of Kpo/coSeiAos from k/dokos and 

 SeiXos. 



"The soverign power of genuine Saffron is plainly proved by the antipathy 

 of the crocodile thereunto; for the crocodile's tears are never true save when he 

 is forced where Saffron groweth, whence he hath his name of KpoKoSeiXos, or the 

 Saffron -fearer, knowing himself to be all poison and it all antidote." Thos. Fuller, 

 Worthies of England, about 1661, Vol. I, p. 336; reprint of 181 1. 



"For which cause those among the Egyptians that had the charge to look 

 to the bees in their gardens were wont to smear their bee-hive with Saffron, which 

 as soon as the crocodile perceived, he would presently run away." Tom Coryat's 

 Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five nwneths travells, &c, 161 1, p. 182. 



China. Reference is made to the cultivation of Saffron in China in Yale's 

 Marco Polo, Vol. II. Chapter 80, p. 179-180. 



*See appendix. 



