The Tears of Re: Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt

Abstract

According to a papyrus written around 300 BCE, the Egyptian sun god Re “wept and the tears from his eyes fell on the ground and turned into a bee” This origin story sets the scene for The Tears of Re, in which author Gene Kritsky explores archaeological evidence of early beekeeping and its place in Egyptian culture. Kritsky, who received a Fulbright Scholar grant to teach entomology at Minya University in Upper Egypt in the early 1980s, has been smitten with both bees and Egyptian history for years. In his newest book, he emphasizes the difference between honey hunting and the birth of beekeeping. Humans have harvested honey for at least 8,000 years, robbing combs from wild colonies, but the Egyptian civilization was the first to practice large-scale, organized beekeeping. The first known archaeological evidence of human-made beehives comes from Egypt's Old Kingdom, when pharaoh Newoserre Any built his spectacular solar temple in the 25th century BCE. On five limestone blocks, together measuring only two feet by six inches, artists etched and painted four scenes of early beekeeping. Sadly, the most tantalizing vignette, in which a man kneels before nine horizontal beehives, only partially survives. He holds an oval object in one hand, cupping his other hand over the opening that faces the hives. Hieroglyphs label his actions nft, translated as “to blow”; the root of this word means “emitting a breath or a little sound” In Eva Crane's The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting (1999), she describes the practice among present-day, traditional Egyptian beekeepers of “calling” the queen during swarm season, when colonies split to reproduce: The beekeeper smoked the bees from the front and “called” the bees several times. The call, which was described as kak, kak, or kak, kak, kaak, or ee, ee, imitates a sound known as piping, made by young virgin queens… Any virgin queens free in the hive or still in their cells were likely to reply to his “calling,” in which case the beekeeper knew that the colony would swarm unless he took action (page 169).

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