WAS THE COCOA-NUT KNOWN TO THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS? 103 
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 
much like either a Palm or a 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 
Portion of the Temple of Edfou (Edfu). 
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 sufficiently young, and disappears on approach- 
ing 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 
