The global bee population comes up in the news every now and again. Sometimes we’re assured that the number is stable or rising; more often, we’re warned about collapsing colonies and the large-scale ecological disaster that could result. As with most high-stakes issues, it can be difficult to know what to believe. But even if you lack the time to invest in an understanding of the science behind the complex connections between apian and human welfare, you can easily come to appreciate the importance of bees if you learn just how long they’ve played a role in our civilization.
As Elana Spivack writes at History.com, “a cave painting in northeastern Spain depicting a human harvesting honey dates back 7,500 years to the Neolithic period, according to research published in 2021 in the journal Trabajos de Prehistoria.” Just last year, a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society confirmed that bronze containers discovered in an underground shrine in a sixth-century-BC Greek settlement not far from Pompeii contained a residue of honey. We’ve long known of hieroglyphs from ancient Egypt that depict bees and the keeping thereof; “according to a 2022 paper in the journal Animals, the use of honeybees in the Nile Valley can be traced to the earliest years of the Egyptian kingdom.”
Here in the twenty-first century, most of us regard honey as nothing more than a relatively healthy sweetener. In ancient Egypt, too, it was used to improve the taste of their bread and beer, but it was also put to important medical uses. “Because it’s so thick, rejects any kind of growth and contains hydrogen peroxide, it creates the perfect barrier against infection for wounds,” writes Smithsonian’s Natasha Geiling. “The ancient Egyptians used medicinal honey regularly, making ointments to treat skin and eye diseases.” They may not have been the first to do so, given that the earliest known uses of honey are recorded on Sumerian clay tablets, but they took respect for the stuff to a whole new level, describing honeybees as originating from the tears of their sun god Re (formerly known in the English-speaking world as Ra).
That particular piece of mythology is recorded on some Egyptian papyri; others reveal how much honey was rationed to workers, at least those employed directly by the Pharaoh. In those days, the substance’s golden color reflected its dearness, and it seems that common laborers and their families could go a lifetime without ever tasting a spoonful themselves. Today, of course, we take it for granted that we can go down to the supermarket and cheaply buy an economy-size tub of honey that never goes bad. But then, ancient Egyptian honey has never gone bad either: thanks to the very same chemical and biological properties that made it useful for healing, the sealed jars of it remain theoretically edible even after 3,000 years. Drizzle it on some genuine Greek yogurt, and you’ve got a large swath of the history of civilization in breakfast form.
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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. He’s the author of the newsletter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Summarizing Korea) and Korean Newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
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