156 DOTTINGS ON THE ROADSIDE. [Chap. X.—B. S. 
an affirmative answer, I should reply—There is no 
reason why the Cocoa-nut should not have been culti¬ 
vated at Thebes more than three thousand years ago. 
Some varieties of the nut will grow far inland, and 
Thebes is not so very far distant from the sea to pre¬ 
clude such a contingency: the climate would also 
admit of it. Again, if the Cocoa-nut could be drifted 
in modern times by the prevailing winds and marine 
currents from "Western America to Eastern Asia, there 
is no reason why it should not have done the same 
three thousand years ago, when the distribution of 
land and water must have been pretty much the same 
as it is now, and the direction of the winds and cur¬ 
rents was doubtless not different from what we find 
in our days. It is therefore not unlikely that the 
Cocoa-nut, if known in Asia three thousand years ago, 
might have found its way to Egypt,—even Solomon’s 
fleet having brought home curiosities of every descrip¬ 
tion from Ceylon and other parts,—and might have 
been cultivated by a gentleman attached to horticul¬ 
ture. But I am not quite prepared to confirm the 
venture that the Mama-en-Tdianent of the catalogue of 
the Egyptian garden, to which Mr. Goodwin alludes, 
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 very 
much like either a Palm or a Banana. 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 
Banana fruit having no water inside. But the 
