HERODOTUS AS A BOTANIST. 91. 



And deep asleep he seemed, yet all awake, 



And music in his ears his beating heart did make. 



Tennyson, Lotos-eaters, pp. 59, 60. 



By way of still further illustration of the symbolical con- 

 nection of the lotus with Amenti, the unseen realm, compare 

 the scene in Rider Hago-ard's Cleopatra, wherein (p. 37) 

 Harmachis invokes the deities. {Addenda VII.) 



" O Amen Osiris, the supreme in Amenti, hearken unto me. 

 "O Isis, great mother goddess, mother of the Horus, hearken unto me. 

 Let a sign be given me even now to seal my life to the life above. 



" ' Behold a sign ! Possess thyself in patience, Harmachis.' 

 " And as the voice spoke, a cold hand touched my hand, and left some- 

 what within it. Then the cloud rolled from the face of the moon, the 

 wind passed, the pylon ceased to tremble, and the night was as the 

 night had been. As the ligiit came back, I gazed upon that which had 

 been left within my hand. It was a bud of the holy lotus new breaking 

 into bloom, and from it came a most sweet scent, and while I gazed, 

 behold, the lotus joassed from my grasp, and was gone, leaving me 

 astonished." 



Herodotus om Different Kinds of Grain. 



Others make barley and wheat their food. It is a disgrace 

 to do so in Egypt, where the grain they live on is spelt 

 wliich some call zea. — Herodotus, Lib. II, 3G. 



This statement of Herodotus has a foundation in fact, but 

 is only partially true. 



lu the first place, Pliny shows that the olyra here mentioned 

 is not rice nor the same as zea, as Herodotus supposed. And 

 it is an ideti equally extravagant to -imagine that the 

 Egyptians considered it a disgrace to live on wheat and 

 barley. 



Though the olpri or doora bread was eaten by the great 

 mass of the Egyptians (the olyra being in point of fact the 

 doora of modern Egypt, Holcus sorghum), and poor people 

 may have used doora as at the present day, when they could 

 not afford wheaten bread, as we are informed by Rawlinson, 

 who also states that the doora is the only grain besides 

 wheat and barley represented in the sculptures. 



That both Avheat and barley are noticed in Lower Egypt 

 long before the time of Herodotus, we have the testimony of 



H 2 



