Honey Harvest (Ancient Egypt)
| Honey harvest in hieroglyphics | ||||||
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| Old empire |
Nefet-bitu Nft-bjjtw Curls of bees |
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Meh-bitu MḤ-bjjtw filling the honey |
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Chetem-bit ḫtm-bjjt sealing the honey |
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In ancient Egypt, the honey harvest was a central theme in ancient Egyptian mythology and in the cult of the king . Around 3000 BC In BC honey was considered "the food of the gods" and a source of immortality: a pot of honey was weighed as much as a donkey. During excavations of royal tombs, honey was often found as grave goods. The best attested older forms of representation were in the world chamber of the solar sanctuary of Niuserre (2455 to 2420 BC).
Basics
The planning was based on the ancient Egyptian lunar calendar , which had the advantage over the ancient Egyptian administrative calendar that the seasons did not move through the ancient Egyptian calendar year.
Lure the bees
The seasonal preparations for the honey harvest began with the attraction of the bees. For this purpose, the responsible ancient Egyptian official, in his function as a honey man, produced a bee-like noise by bringing a jug to his lips and imitating a queen bee with different breathing rhythms. By answering the queen bee directly, the honey man could determine whether the natural swarming was imminent or whether it had to be triggered by him.
A young queen bee flies out on a wedding flight several times in sunny weather . It mates with a total of up to 20 drones high in the air. The drone dies during copulation . In Lower Egypt , the drones were then driven out of the beehive in the so-called "drone battle" in May ; in Upper Egypt from June .
Filling and sealing
In the beehive, the sugary juice is passed on to the hive bees . From a water content of 30 to 40%, the slightly thickened nectar is spread over and also in the brood nest in empty honeycomb cells. The further evaporation of the water is now accelerated by fanning with the wings. Finally, a water content of less than 20% is achieved. This completes the drying process of filling the honey by the bees.
The now finished honey is carried around again and stored in storage cells above the brood nest, where it is covered with an air-impermeable layer of wax. This process was known as sealing the honey and was the sign of the beginning of the honey harvest. Most of the time, only the surplus from bee production was harvested. The main harvest took place in Lower Egypt in the months of Menchet ( August ) and Hut-heru ( September ); in Upper Egypt in the month of Ka-her-ka ( October to November ).
literature
- Elmar Edel : On the inscriptions on the seasonal reliefs of the “World Chamber” from the sun sanctuary of Niuserre (= news of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. Philological-Historical Class. Born 1963, No. 5, ISSN 0065-5287 ). Part 2, continued. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1964, pp. 177-179.