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NA 1 URE 



Jan. 31, il 



unlikely to have happened in any other months of the 

 year. At Thebes the floral carpet is quite dried up and 

 destroyed as early as April, and in the district of Cairo 

 ill May, so that there would have been great diffiouUics 

 attending the collection in one day towards the end of 

 April of the la-'ge number of flower-heads requisite fur the 

 preparation of the wreaths of Nzi-Chonsu. And as far as 

 the other flowers of these wreaths are concerned February 

 to March are the only ad nissible months. This applies 

 especially to the fl )wers of the poppy, which evea in 

 .'Mexandria disappear towards the end of April. 



If we are able, from our knowledge of t'le sea .on; of 

 the present Ejyptian vegetation, to limit the i.iterment 

 of a mummy to a short scries of month;, it follows there- 

 from the fact, that in the case of the date of the funeral 

 rites attending the placing of a mummy in the final tomb 

 being originally indicated in the inscription on the coffin 

 or elsewhere, light might be thrown on the theoretical 

 determination of the relative Sothis (Sirius) periods. In 

 chronological determinations, which, as far as concerns 

 ancient Egypt, anterior to the time of the twenty sixth 

 dynasty, are still open to grave suspicion, the aid thus pos- 

 sibly attainable is not to lo; despised. We know from the 

 hieroglyphical writings, the temple inscriptions and orna- 

 mental pictures of the temple, that the ancient Egyptians 

 had a great predilection for their gardens ; and we learn 

 from the narratives of their criisides in distant countries 

 that they gave a prominent place to foreign vegetable 

 productions, even in their triumphal processions. Amongst 

 objects met with in the funeral repasts and in the offering-, 

 in the tombs there are, moreover, so many product-, of 

 evident foreign origin, that we cannot be surprised at 

 finding that miny of the flo.vers and leaves employed in 

 the composition of the funeril wre iths and garl mds 

 could not h ive belonged to the native flora of the country, 

 but must have been cultivated e.xpressly for the purpose. 

 This may, then, hwe been the case with Ccn/ar/rci 

 dcpicssa, which, like Alcca ficifolia and Delpliiiiiuiii 

 orioitale, suggests Western Asia, and especially the 

 countries of the Upper Euphrates. ."Xs far as Papxver 

 rha-as is concerned, it may aho b; assumed thit it w.is 

 cultivated by the ancient Egyptians on account of its 

 brilliantly coloured flowers, although this does not 

 exclude the possibility, independently of any necessity 

 for a change in the climat; to have taken place in the 

 interval, that the common poppy was not such an extra- 

 ordinary rarity in the cornfields of that period as it is at 

 the present time. 



Among the mummies of the twenty-first dynasty dis- 

 covered at Deir-el-B ihari, there may lie hidden a 

 number of plant remiins still unknown to me; as a 

 careful search through the coffins, especially as far as 

 those mummies are concerned which are still preserved 

 with their wrappe s intact, was for many reasons neces- 

 sarily postponed. The garlands, particularly, in those 

 coffins, composed as they are of various leaves and 

 flowers, may be expected to furaish many novelties to the 

 ancient flora of Egypt. .'Vmong a few fragments of the 

 wreaths of Mimusops leaves and Nympha?a petals that 

 have reached the Natural History Museum of Milan 

 there accidentally appeared a detached corolla of a Jas- 

 mine, which may belong to Jasininiiin saiiibac, a species 

 still commonly cultivated in Egyptian gardens. The 

 Egyptian Maseun in the Cairo suburb of Boulak con- 

 tains in addition a number of plant remains of authenti- 

 cated species taken from earlier exploration; of tombs 

 that would go :o enrich the flora of ancient Egypt. 



In the spring of last year Ur. Maspero discovered in 

 the well-kiiown burying-placo of Nofert Sekeru, near 

 Sheykh AbJel Gurna, Thebes, an unopened vault of later 

 date, in which was a well-pre-erved femile mummy of 

 the Gre.:o-Roma:i period. This mummy is swathed from 

 head to foot in wreaths of the leaves of Mimusops, with- 

 out any flowers. These leaves are larger (eight centi- 



metres without the petiole), becau ,e fully grown, than 

 those in the older garlands. The petioles are broken oflf 

 short, and the whole construction of the wreaths is of a 

 much ruder and more careless des-eription. Specially 

 interesting in this mummy is a wreath around the fore- 

 he id composed entirely of the leaves of OU-a cn,op<£ii. 

 These leaves are also folded and threaded edge to edge 

 with the tips directed upwards ; but the mode in which 

 they are sewn together ia different fro n the other wreaths, 

 being done by a coarse string of a fibrous material as yet 

 unknown- The Leyden Museum possesses similar funeral 

 wreaths of olive leaves,' and in the Berlin Museum there 

 are some bundles composed of branchlets of the olive tree. 

 Whether the " wreath of justification " mentioned in the 

 obituary of Osiris was such a w eath of olive leaves, or 

 whether under this designation the garlands of Mimusops 

 and willow leaves which encircled the neck and breast of 

 the mummies were intended has not yet been ascer- 

 tained. 



Moreover, Theophrastus, Pliny, and Strabo authenticate 

 the presence of the olive in Upper Egypt. According to 

 Theophrastus (iv. 2, 9) the olive tree grew in the Theban 

 province. According to Strabo (xvn. § 293) olive trees 

 were only found in Fajum and in the vicinity of Alex- 

 andria. Now the olive tree flourishes in Lower and 

 Middle Egypt, and very old trees exist in Fajum and in 

 the Oaees. 



In a special glass case in the Egyptian museum at 

 Boulak is a variety of objects which formed the funeral 

 repasts and offerings in a vault at Dra Abu Negga 

 ( Thebes) of the twelfth dynasty {2200 to 2400 B.C.) 

 Among them are the following vegetable products : 

 grains of barley = and wheat; tubers oi Cypcrus esculentiis ; 

 kernels of Mimusops Schi/npe?-i; fruits of Punica gra- 

 vattiiu, Ficus Carica, Balanites agyptiaca, Hyphane 

 thcbaica, Medenia argun ; a water-tiask of Lagen iria 

 Tiilgaris ; two cones of Pinus Pinea ; a mess oi Lens 

 csciiliiita; two see's o^ Faba vulgaris, ^\iii one seed of 

 Cajatuis indiciis; a broom made of Ccriiana pratciisis ; a 

 bowl full of capsules of Lintiin luniiile intermixed Hith 

 pods of Si/tapis arvensis, var. Allionii. Among the 

 pi ints here cited the Linum deserves special considera- 

 tion, for, notwithstanding our ample knowledge of its 

 cidtivaiion, thanks to the records of the early authors, 

 botanists who have busied themselves with the investiga- 

 tion of the vegetable remains of ancient Eg>pt have 

 hitherto not been able to determine with certainty the 

 species of Linum cultivated. 



Linum capsules of the twelfth dynasty exi^t in a very 

 good stJte, together with the calyx and ptdicel, the latter 

 two centimetres long. They are all closed, al. hough the 

 seeds appear to have attained perfect maturity. The 

 length of the capsules reaches 8 millimetres, and the 

 breidth 675 millimetres; and the seeds are 5 mm. 

 long. The dimensions given are very little inferior to 

 those of the capsule of the Linum, cultivated in Egypt at 

 the pre ent day. In external characters it is so like the 

 capsule of the flax now cultivated, that one detect-; no 

 difference at first >ight ; and it is only after cutting the 

 seed through th-it one becomes aware of the change 

 wrough' in the course of 4000 years. The proportionate 

 .^ize of the seed, which is much narrowed upward-;, but 

 above all the numerous long weak hairs which occur on 

 the inside of the partitions of the cip ule, leave no doubt 

 as to the ancient flax belonging to the kind e.<clusively 

 cultivated still in Egypt and Abyssinia, the Linum 

 IiumiU', Mill. (syn. Linum usitatissiiuiim, Linn., var. 

 crcpi/iins, Schiibl. and Martens). 



Another coincidence in the ancient and modern Linum 



' Ui-ry belong, according to Dr. Pleyt--, to a mummy of the time ni 

 Osorkon (twenty-sec nd dynasty). See ah - De Cmdolle, '■ Physlolog.e, " 

 p 69^ 



mu«uni is also p.-tserved a bowl rcntain'l 

 i.f the fif.Ii dynasty (3300 to 3500 years 



broken ears of barh y 

 c ) wh ch was found 



