In Egypt and the East 251 



We search Egypt in vain for the graceful and sensuous 

 imagery of the Hindus. There are Egyptian love-songs, 

 but the voice of the bee is not in them. Varro's " birds " 

 were not the beloved companions of rural scenes, and if 

 they wove their dark lines across the face of the lotus in 

 Egypt, we are not informed of it. The nearest we come to 

 an appreciation of the bee in Egyptian poetry is in the 

 following : — 



" On the festival day of the garden, that is, on the day 

 when the garden was in full bloom, the wild fig-tree calls 

 the maiden to come into the shade of the fig-leaves as a 

 trysting-place. 



" The little sycamore^ 

 Which she planted with her hand, 

 She begins to speak, 

 And her words are as drops of honey." 



We know that honey was valued in sacrificial rites. 



From the great papyrus of Rameses III., in which he 

 gives full details of all he had done for the temples of his 

 country during his reign of thirty-one years, we learn that 

 the following payments of sacrificial funds were made from 

 the royal treasury : — 



331,702 jars of incense, honey, and oil. 



3,100 uten of wax. 



1,933,766 jars of incense, honey, fat, oil, etc. 



According to Brugsch Bey, an inscription on a tomb in 

 the necropolis of Abydos in Middle Egypt reads thus : 



"The king appoints that a sum of three and a half 

 pounds of silver from the treasury of the temple of Osiris 

 be given annually in order to cover a daily demand for one 

 measure of honey to be used at the ceremony of the wor- 

 ship of the dead for his beloved Naromantha." 



1 Wild fig-tree. 



