Remember the riddle posed by the Sphinx (a curious creature) to Oedipus: what goes on 4 legs in the morning, 2 in the afternoon, and 3 in the evening? The answer is the human being himself, the most curious creature of all.

Hello, Laurence:

I can give you some references for Ancient Egypt; in them you can find further information. They are the following:

_Loprieno, A. (2001): 'La pensée et l'écriture. Pour une analyse sémiotique de la culture égyptienne': Cybèle.

_--- (ed.) (1996): 'Ancient Egyptian Literature. History and Forms': Brill.

_R. B. Parkinson (2010): 'Poetry and Culture in Middle Kingdom Egypt. A Dark Side to Perfection': Equinox.

I hope this can help you.

Regards

In the latter references there are a lot of examples of wordplays, that were very frequently used by Ancient Egyptians in order to make new and significant realities.

Hello Francisco, thank you for your help. I am wondering what the connection was between the Sphinx mentioned by Nelson (above) and the Sphinx of Egypt both seem like riddle creatures or chimera made up of different animals - flying females with sharp claws - maybe wasps, hornets or bees. Bees were such an important creature in prehistoric times. The Egyptians were some of the earliest beekeepers. I am trying to link bees metaphorically with serpents.

I will check out those books, thanks.

Laurence, according to Robert E. Bell, "Women of Classical Mythology" (Oxford 1991), 402-3, the Sphinx is reputedly older than the pyramids of Egypt. Some said she was the daughter of Orthrus and Chimaera (!), of Typhon and Chimaera or of Typhon and Echnidna. Before her Theban episode with Oedipus, she was known only as one of various replicated guardians of approaches to Egyptian tombs or temples. After hearing Oedipus answer her riddle (here already alluded) she flew against a cliff and was never heard from again. The connection with your bees?

It gets very confusing with the different early writers making references to either earlier texts that have disappeared or to oral stories that they knew of. It is hard therefore to prove my theory but I have been trying to show that some monsters like the Chimaera seem to exemplify a certain type of riddle. ( See my other question about the Chimera.) So these composite monsters all seem to be part snake. Now if my riddle idea holds true then snakes can stand for bees metaphorically because they both have venom. There is also the link with them both living in holes in the ground and the fact that they are called "guardians" of special places. Bees you may know have guardian bees at the entrance to their hives.

I tried to steal some honeycomb from a wild bees' nest in a hollow tree. It was mid winter and not a sign of bees. But as soon as I put my knife to the entrance they "awoke" immediately and came pouring out like black smoke from the hole and I was stung as I ran for cover! It would take a brave man to steal their treasure. So here are the elements of another serpent like monster, the dragon. They were said to sleep for long periods, guard treasure, fly, roar, have claws and breathe fire (the effects of venom gave a burning sensation.)

There is more....!

Bees in the Graeco-Roman world came to signify being privy to cosmic mysteries. In the "Ion" 534, Plato compares the souls of poets to bees, flying from flower to flower and wandering over the honey-flowing fountains of the Muses. Babies were given honey among the ancients to be prophetic. Pindar reports that the prophetess of the Delphic Oracle was called the Delphic Bee (able to decipher riddles).

Quotes like these that you have supplied will be added to my growing collection. Thank you.

I am trying to put them together to make a book.

Man's interest in honey and bee hunting will have started hundreds if not thousands of years before any recorded story. That means there was a long time for these riddles and stories about bees to be amplified and exaggerated and given monstrous size and shape. It also means that the men/women who hunted for the honey would have grown in status and bravery and even strength. Beowulf was such a one.

Honey was needed for mead and mead stood for power.

It was the story of Beowulf who fought Grendel that gave me the key. What sort of hero, I wondered, would fail to kill his enemy outright? Grendel had his poison arm pulled off and died - off-stage as it were. Beehunter was fighting a giant Bee that left his sting in his hands.

It is interesting that a strong tradition in folklore has survived down the centuries and that is talking to bees. They must be told of births and deaths in a family. This is because bees can "answer". They have the ability to produce a number of different sounds - from humming , buzzing to piping. This makes me wonder if bees were used by the Oracle. She might have used the sounds of the bees to make her interpretations or prophesies. Even in children's fairy tales dragons are often able to talk.

The idea that bees/serpents were "privy to cosmic mysteries" is a feature in several folktales.

Homer's hymn to Hermes speaks of certain holy women who feed on honeycomb who "are eager to tell the truth."

Bees flying around hives appear in in miniature birth of Jesus Christ. They symbolize the Virgin Mary. Italovyzantina manuscripts Exultet 10th-13th century (Montecassino 1, Gaeta 1, MS Lat. 2, Jonh Rylands Libr.)

Thanks, Stellos, I am not familiar with this symbolism. Do you know what aspects of the Virgin are compared to bees?

I have just found a reference by an archaic greek poet who compared women to different animals like sow, fox, donkey etc. and then ended by comparing the best women like bees.

Dear Laurence, bees symbolize virginity of Our Lady even after the birth of Jesus, in the same way as the queen bee

Laurence, I have found a website on Medieval literature which surveys uses of bees in the pagan world (Virgil, AEneid) and their Christian transformation in Dante´s "Divine Comedy." I see here no mention of the Virgin, although heavenly love is certainly involved:

"In Purgatorio XVIII and Paradiso XXXI, Dante recontextualizes a Virgilian simile as part of his broader literary and cultural crusade to Christianize and surpass classical antiquity by establishing the reign of the God of Love in literature. Dante borrows Virgil's bees, originally symbols of industry, asexuality and earthly empire, and transforms them in a completely original way.9 In the Commedia, Virgil's bees fly up, as it were, beyond earthiness and sterility to heaven where they become heralds of a Christian empire and agents of Love. The bees abandon their former role as pagan signifier and adopt a novel Christian status defined by medieval conceptions of love and heavenly empire, thus exalting themselves while confirming the centrality of love in its totality. Virgil is deposed in the procedure while Love and the Florentine poet are established."

Northrop Frye could help, as well as Joseph Campbell

Thank you for your suggestions. I have read some Joseph Cambell many years ago but I do not know Northrop Frye. I will check these out.

Hello,

I've published an article on the metaphors of cattle pen and sheepfold in Mesopotamian epic poetry in Sumerian from the 2nd millennium BCE, referring to cities and temples, if that's of interest to you. You might also want to look at Jeremy Black's Reading Sumerian Poetry for a broader analysis of metaphors and images in early Mesopotamian poetry.

Harmansah, Omur; 2013. “The Cattlepen and the Sheepfold: Cities, Temples, and Pastoral Power in Ancient Mesopotamia.” In Heaven on Earth: Temples, Ritual, and Cosmic Symbolism in the Ancient World. Deena Ragavan (ed.). Oriental Institute Seminars 9. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 371-392.

Hello Omur, I have read your article with interest.

The metaphorical use of sheepfold and cattle pen is especially interesting. The beehive was also used in a similar metaphoric way of a city with the ruler thought to be a king bee.

I have found a number of links between bees and bulls/cattle and between bees and sheep. Bees have horns (antennae) and live in "herds" which link them metaphorically. I am wondering if the Golden Fleece that Jason went after could be a giant honeycomb that in hot countries can be found hanging from tree branches. Honeycomb can be "harvested" annually like a sheep's fleece and is made by creatures who go out daily to "graze" in meadows. It is a golden colour and the honey has properties of healing.

As I am just working on beeswax and honeycomb building, I am also interested in the history of the discovery of the origin of beeswax and the appreciation of it.

I remember the verses about bees of the Exsultet, which I often sung as cantor during the Easter Vigil, the celebration of the Easter Candle. Unfortunately the German translation is incorrect, but the original Latin words are “Alitur enim liquantibus ceris, quas in substantiam pretiosae huius lampadis, apis mater eduxit”. What means: the mother, the bee, Maria who has born the body of Jesus, the wax; and He is sacrificing his body to illuminate the world.

Till the Missale Romanum of 1570 exists another part of the Exsultet, the praise of the bee, which describes the life of the honeybee, the bees don't know males or females, they are collecting their young, the opinion which derives from the Romans and Greeks (although Aristoteles seems to had better knowledge of the honeybee castes).

(Latin text in the attachement.)

M.T. Varro mentioned also another belief of the origin of bees, the “Bugonia”, in “De Re Rustica”: “In the first place, bees are produced partly from bees, and partly from the rotted carcass of a bullock. And so Archelaus, in an epigram, says that they are 'the roaming children of a dead cow'; and the same writer says: 'While wasps spring from horses, bees come from calves.'”

Vergil in his Georgica seemed to spreed this opinions to the Early Fathers of the Church, which they used to make a metaphor for the virginity of Maria.

A good source about the symbols of the Exsultet is the German book “Das Exsultet. Geschichte, Theologie und Gestaltung der österlichen Lichtdanksagung, G.Fuchs and H.M.Weikmann (2005)”.

Another about Exultet Rolls, I have just ordered, may be “Kelly T.F. (1996) The Exultet in Southern Italy.”. A standard work about the mythology of the bee is “Ransome, H.M.(1937) The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore.” reprinted 2004.

With best regards

Thomas

Ps.: You mentioned the great honeycomb. It seems, that you mean the free building species of honeybees like Apis dorsata, the giant honeybee. But their distribution is limited from India, Nepal to the Phillipines. In this content it's also possible, that the text means a rare free building bee nest of our western honeybees, which sometimes happens when a swarm of bees is unable to find a new adequate nesting site due to bad weather conditions etc..

(About giant honeybees and honey hunting I can recommend the film “The Magic Trees of Assam”, Gerald Kastberger, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, in witch I was engaged.)

Thank you for this Thomas.

I've attached a file about a very early use of beeswax to fill a tooth!

There is an early story from Egypt of someone making a wax model crocodile that he throws in the Nile and it changes into the animal, I will have to search for the reference.

Wax tablets of course were used for early writing.

Re- Bugonia a rotten carcass must have produced millions of maggots and then flies perhaps there was confusion about swarms. But there is also a metaphorical connection that I think should be considered. Both bees and bulls have horns (antennae) live in herds (hives) both go out to the meadows to graze (collect). I found also a riddle that speaks of "milking" a hive. A first swarm was called a bull swarm. There were mythical bulls that could move their horns (like antennae) and breathe fire like dragons (or stinging bees). And so on....

Thank you for reminding me or rather warning me that the bees that make their combs that hang from branches are only to be found east of India. I am wondering if they had a much wider territory into Europe in prehistoric times but were hunted to extinction as man cleared forests and plundered all the honey. Then Jason was sent to recover a rare golden "fleece" hanging from a tree that was protected by fiery serpents ( angry bees).

There is a film on YouTube showing a 6foot honey comb being rolled up like a fleece and carried off by a man on his shoulder!

Honeycomb is metaphorically like a fleece. It is harvested/shorn once a year from creatures that go daily like flocks to the meadows to get fat.

Have you discovered the Bugarian bee dancers?

Thank you for your suggestions.

I found the story of the wax crocodile mentioned in the Westcar Papyrus. It's a good link to the usage of our votive figures, mainly domestic animals and human organs formed out of wax in wooden molds. The Volkskundemuseum Graz has a rich collection of such molds used by the gingerbread bakers and wax chandlers (picture of a beautiful horse in the attachment).

Also the article about beeswax as dental filling adds a new aspect to my summaries of the usage of wax.

Ad Bugonia: I agree with you; I can imagine the impression (also fear) to the humans when thousands of flies are flying up from the carcass of such a large body, but I am wondering that this became a practised rite as Vergil describes in great detail.

Ad honeybees: South Asia is considered the hotspot of evolution of the social honeybees, the genus Apis, due to the largest number of different species. But only the cavity nesting bees Apis cerana and the ancestors of Apis mellifera were able to spreed into temperate regions and to surmount the natural barriers of the mountains. They developed the ability to survive cold winters and to store a surplus of honey, decreasing the water content of the nectar. Apis dorsata colonies store nectar only for short periods, liquid like water. They are building a single large comb (about 2m width are reported) where they rear their brood, store honey and pollen. A similar species, Apis laboriosa, the cliff honeybee, in the Himalayan region nests up to 3000m. But both show migratory behavior, they abandon their nests seasonally to follow food resources. (picture of abandoned nests of the cliff honeybee, the dark region is the brood rearing part, light colored is the honey storing part, two nests are still in use)

Only colonies of cavity nesting bees are able to stay many years at favorable places, building large combs (more in the length than width) and storing large amounts of honey. I remember a picture of a honey comb in a beekeeping journal. A beekeeper removed a bee colony from an unused chimney, I will try to find it.

Therefore I can well imagine the “golden fleece” hanging from the “ceiling” inside an old hollow oak tree, accessible to man, filled with ripe sealed honey.

Ad Bugarian bee dancers: I don't hear about, but dances were often performed to “speak” with animals.

Do the Asian giant honeybees also do the waggle dance to indicate sources of nectar?

Yes, dances of the giant honeybee are performed in the same way that means translating the direction to the sun to gravity, dancing strait up indicates the direction to the sun. Differences in the indication of the distance are only like dialects.

But their is another species, the dwarf honeybee Apis florea, nesting in shrubs and small trees hidden by dense vegetation. The bees construct also a single comb supported from a small branch which will be wrapped by comb. The dances of these bees are considered to be of an earlier evolutionary state, because are performed on the top of the comb on a horizontal dance platform without the necessity to transform the sun direction to gravity.

Hello Laurence,

I have not found yet the picture of the huge honeycomb I mentioned earlier, but there is a report of a chimney sweeper about a 15 feet comb :

http://www.starherald.com/news/local_news/chimney-sweep-encounters-huge-honeycomb/article_9ec488c4-e908-5a75-8749-0c940359524e.html?mode=jqm

Further searching I discovered a Greek legend about the Melissani ! cave in Kefalonia, a place of worship of Pan and the Nymphes, who are often associated with bees:

“The underground lake of Melissani was known to it's surrounding inhabitants since ancient times. The ancient Greeks had climbed into the cave using a rope. According to a myth, thousands of years ago there wasn't any water in the cave and the only contact with the earth's surface was through an underground passage. Swarms of bees lived in the cave. Huge honeycombs in the shape of stalactites dripped honey. This is perhaps the explanation for the name of the cave "Melissani". "Melissa" in Greek means bee. After several earthquakes, however, cracks opened in the rock formation. Consequently, the passage to the earth's surface was flooded and disappeared.” (from

http://www.greecexplorer.com/kefalonia/kefalonia_en_culture.php)