Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Traynor 2016
Traynor 2016
The Tears of Re: Beekeeping painted four scenes of early beekeeping. as The Sacred Bee, by Hilda Ransome,
in Ancient Egypt Sadly, the most tantalizing vignette, in but discusses information conveyed by
Gene Kritsky which a man kneels before nine horizontal artifacts. They show, for example, that
2015; 160 pages, 103 plates beehives, only partially survives. He holds the ancient Egyptians understood that
Oxford University Press, New York, NY an oval object in one hand, cupping his bees visited flowers. A partial relief in the
ISBN: 978-0-199-36138-0 other hand over the opening that faces tomb of Ankhor depicts a man beckoning
$29.95 (hardcover) the hives. Hieroglyphs label his actions the bees to come toward a large tree, per-
nft, translated as “to blow”; the root of haps the earliest recognition that honey
According to a papy- this word means “emitting a breath or bees worked plants to produce honey.
rus written around a little sound.” In Eva Crane’s The World The role of bees as pollinators was not
300 BCE, the Egyp- History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting yet known, and the pollen transported
tia n su n g o d Re (1999), she describes the practice among on the bee’s corbicula was believed to
“wept and the tears present-day, traditional Egyptian beekeep- be wax. The book addresses not only the
from his eyes fell ers of “calling” the queen during swarm methods of ancient beekeeping, but also
on the ground and season, when colonies split to reproduce: the hierarchical organization of beekeep-
turned into a bee.” The beekeeper smoked the bees from ers, the use of hive products in medicine,
This origin story sets the front and “called” the bees several and other ramifications of apiculture in
the scene for The Tears of Re, in which times. The call, which was described Egyptian culture.
author Gene Kritsky explores archaeo- as kak, kak, or kak, kak, kaak, or ee, This subject matter will appeal to stu-
logical evidence of early beekeeping and ee, imitates a sound known as pip- dents, beekeepers interested in history,
its place in Egyptian culture. Kritsky, ing, made by young virgin queens… and professors teaching the development
who received a Fulbright Scholar grant Any virgin queens free in the hive of apiculture, but readers should be pre-
to teach entomology at Minya Univer- or still in their cells were likely to pared for the detailed, technical text. It
sity in Upper Egypt in the early 1980s, reply to his “calling,” in which case contains a timeline in the front, but the
has been smitten with both bees and the beekeeper knew that the colony many names and transitions between
Egyptian history for years. In his new- would swarm unless he took action ancient rulers were, at times, a bit bewil-
est book, he emphasizes the difference (page 169). dering. Deeper historical and cultur-
between honey hunting and the birth al context in the text itself would have
of beekeeping. Humans have harvested If the solar-temple vignette depicts the been helpful to those who approach the
honey for at least 8,000 years, robbing same process, Kritsky writes, “then this book with a passion for beekeeping, but
combs from wild colonies, but the Egyp- technique of calling queens has been only superficial knowledge of the reign
tian civilization was the first to practice practiced for over 4,500 years, and the of the pharaohs.
large-scale, organized beekeeping. ancient Egyptians’ understanding of bee In reading The Tears of Re, I was
The first known archaeological evi- behavior was much more advanced than reminded of The Battle of the Books, a sat-
dence of human-made beehives comes we might have guessed.” ire penned by Jonathan Swift in 1704. In it,
from Egypt’s Old Kingdom, when pharaoh Throughout his book, Kritsky details library books spring to life and spar about
Newoserre Any built his spectacular solar what we can learn about ancient bee- whether modern science trumps ancient
temple in the 25th century BCE. On five keeping from fragmentary archeological wisdom. While the books are arguing, a
limestone blocks, together measuring only evidence. He doesn’t explore the myths bee escapes from a spider’s web. In Swift’s
two feet by six inches, artists etched and and folklore captured in other texts such telling, the self-sufficient spider, with its
complicated but fragile web, represents
Read more American Entomologist book reviews online at modern science. The bee, working coop-
http://ae.oxfordjournals.org/content/62/3 eratively with her colony-mates to cre-
ate “sweetness and light” from countless