Honey: An Origin Story, Part 2

This represents the Melissae, which are basically (oversimplification) bee/honey goddesses.

This is going to be 3 parts, not 2, as the topic is too expansive for me to fit what I consider to be the bare minimum acceptable into 2 posts. I struggle hard to identify the line between informative and information overload, so breaking it up like this helps mitigate that issue.

The Honey’s the Word

If your name is Melissa, your name stems from the Greek word μέλι (meli), which means honey and is derived from Proto-Indo-European (PIE)*melit-. This is also where the word for honey in an overwhelmingly large number of languages stems from. Unless you’re Irish, in which case your name probably has a lot to do with Jesus and absolutely nothing to do with honey. Despite the word in Irish for honey being mil, the etymologies of these are different. You non-Irish Melissas, though, are also named after a Greek nymph who discovered and taught mankind about how to use honey.

There are multiple versions of the Zeus-honey/Melissa narrative, and the one in Diodorus Siculus is super fun, switches Melissa (Melissus) from nymph/multiple goddesses to the dad of Zeus’ caretakers, which goes like this:

When she [Rhea] had given birth to Zeus, concealed him in Ide [Mount Ida], as it is called, and, without the knowledge of Kronos (Cronus), entrusted the rearing of him to the Kouretes (Curetes) of Mount Ide. The Kouretes bore him off to a certain cave where they gave him over to the Nymphai (Nymphs) [Ida and Adrasteia], with the command that they should minister to his every need And the Nymphai nurtured the child on a mixture of honey and milk and gave him upbringing at the udder of the goat which was named Amaltheia . . . The god, they say, wishing to preserve an immortal memorial of his close association with the bees, changed the colour of them, making it like copper with the gleam of gold, and since the region lay at a very great altitude, where fierce winds blew about it and heavy snows fell, he made the bees insensible to such things and unaffected by them, since they must range over the most wintry stretches.

This is another rendering of Zeus.

The English word “honey,” though, has its roots in the Proto-Germanic *hunang-. This spreads throughout the Germanic language family areas of Europe, eventually making its way through West Saxon hunig (presumably the “g” in hunig is pronounced like a “y,” as found in a large number of other Old English words), which moves to hony in Middle English, then eventually to our word honey. Where’d it originally come from, though? K(e)neko, the PIE word for “golden yellow,” starts being used by Germanic peoples near the North Sea, and that eventually filters down into honey.

I like this song, and this section reminded me of it. Ditto many other songs. It should be noted here that I am not filling this post up with as many songs as possible that honey reminds me of, even though I really want to.

It’s All History Now

Although it’s assumed that humans have been attacking honeybee hives and snaking all that delicious goodness for themselves for as long as humans have been aware of honey, the first evidence of its use comes from 25,000 years ago in Upper Paleolithic rock art in Spain, Australia, southern Africa, and India. These pieces of art show hives at 25k years ago and collection with ladders being used to access hives at 10k years ago.

Bee harvesting in Mesolithic Spain.

Evidence of human management of bees as livestock (and honey harvesting) goes back to 5500BCE, in Anatolia. We don’t, however, have written evidence of this until 3000BCE. In Egypt, of course. Honey in Egypt, as with many other places that used it, could be used for a wide array of stuff: paying taxes (1/6 of honey produced tended to be the tax in most regions that used honey to pay taxes), alcohol, medicine, food, food preservation, bride prices and marriage contracts, cosmetics, mummification, and all sorts of other things!

This image is of the base of a funerary cone. It’s housed at the Louvre.

What we also see is that all Bronze Age societies at least in the Mediterranean show evidence of investment in bees and honey, but it really is ubiquitous from North Africa up through Scandinavia, over to Southeast Asia and India, in Africa, and so on. Honey, and especially pre-modern beekeeping, can be some dangerous business, and quite a lot of effort goes into producing and harvesting even a small amount! Our oldest evidence of structured apiaries stems from northern Israel, however, and was destroyed somewhere in the 10th-9th century BCE range.

Tel Rehov apiary. I should like to visit this one day.

The honeymoon, if you didn’t know, comes from a 5th-century tradition of isolating a newly married couple for one moon cycle, and that period would include a lot of mead throughout that month for them! This is definitely one way to ensure that baby-making happens with a quickness! There’s also a lot of interesting cultural significance to this rite (particularly in this form), because the mead was provided through gifts from friends and family, and it had to be enough that was gifted to last a full moon cycle. This means that the community on the whole actively invests resources into the new couple, and does so in a fashion that better guarantees a short period before this couple contributes more humans to the society. In addition to this, of course, the process of making mead and gifting it also involves a vast number of gods that would be acknowledged, from Aegir (god of brewing) to Frig (goddess of women and mothers) to Freya (goddess of love and fertility) to Odin (god who stole the mead to begin with), to Njörðr (god of the sea, wealth, fertility), to others. Mead, faith, and community cannot be separated in this belief structure.

The mead-hall is fundamentally one of the most important buildings in both Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon literature from this era, and has a number of mentions in Beowulf (link is for my favorite translation. Although I did study West Saxon under the translator in grad school, this is the edition I taught because it uses the simplest, clearest language), like this one:

But the mead-hall, this noble house,

In morning-tide, was stained with blood. At daylight, the benches were dripping, Drenched by battle. My friends were less, Dear companions, those had death taken. Sit now to table, and tell your tales

Of glorious heroes, as your heart urges.’ Then a bench was placed for the Geats

Gathered together, in the beer-hall:
There the strong-hearted were seated,
The proud and skilful, a thane beside them, Who bore in his hands a rich ale-cup, Poured bright mead. At times a bard
Sang clear in Heorot, brought noble joy
To that great host of Danes and Geats. (484-498)

For the sake of brevity, I’ll let my favorite Old Norse expert explain how mead is created/discovered in this tradition. His translations are excellent, if you want to read them (I’ve read a lot and these are my favorites), and I often read them to Child Tester when on my days to do bedtime. She also really likes this Beowulf coloring book.

In the medieval period of most places (as far as I know), clay remains the preferred method of doing hives, and these hives were actually obliterated when it was time to harvest. During this period, there are no centrifuges, so the main way to separate the way and the honey is through boiling. I mostly know about this because this is the step when I’m brewing all medieval-style that I skip. It’s hard to see a good reason to boil my honey. So you’d boil your honey, let the wax come up to the top, then skim it from the honey so you could make candles and other things from the wax and use for honey for the usual fare: booze, medicine, food, food preservation, commerce.

In case you didn’t know, honey doesn’t freeze, and it also doesn’t spoil. Honey and stuff preserved in honey is sometimes found centuries after it was put up, and it’s always still good. Although most of the time when I use honey to preserve, I’m doing fruits and dealing with the resultant short meads in other fashions, I really like preserving nuts in honey.

Honey soaked nuts. I am not motivated to make my jars look this pretty, even when they’re gifts.

In China, the oldest writing we have is from 200CE, by Shen Nong. It’s a medical reference, because in Chinese Traditional Medicine (TCM), honey is a balanced (Feng Mi) so it’s neither ying nor yang and can be used to support both characters. Ming dynasty pharmacist Li Shizhen (1518-93CE) writes,

Honey can help dispel pathogenic heat, clear away toxins, relieve pain and combat dehydration.

Contemporary researcher Siu-Wan, IP states, in regard to raw honey and TCM,

Honey has been used in traditional Chinese Medicine to treat many diseases for more than two thousands years. In Traditional Chinese Medication, honey is a combination used with bee venom, propolis, royal jelly, pollen and other herbal medications in medical treatment. In addition, the following diseases are good indications for using honey. I) Infectious Diseases: Bacterial Infections: A. Infections caused by gram-positive bacteria, e.g. Streptococcal infections- Pharyngitis, Enterococcal infections, Pneumococcal infections; Staphyloccus Aureus infections, B. Infections caused by gram-negative bacteria, e.g. Meningococcal infections- Meningococcal meningitis., Salmonellae infections-Typhoid fever, Salmonella Gastro-enteritis., Shigella infections-Shigella dysentery. II) Gastrointestinal Diseases: A. Gastritis, B. Peptic ulcer Disease, C. Celiac Disease, D. Antibiotic-Associated Colitis. E. Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. III) Allergic and Immunologic Disorders: A. Allergic Rhinitis B. Rheumatoid arthritis, C. Systemic Lupus Erythematous(SLE), D. Ankylosing spondylitis, E. Multiple Sclerosis. IV) Traumatic wounds: traumatic and surgical wounds managements. CONCLUSIONS. Honey is widely used in traditional Chinese Medicine to treat a lot of infections diseases, autoimmune disorders and traumatic wounds. In addition, we believe honey will pay a more important role in the integrated medical treatment of many internal and surgical diseases in future.

This holds true in Ayurveda (traditional Indian medicine) and throughout Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontient. You also, of course, see honey used for eating, candy-making (oldest form of candy was nuts and fruit stuck together with honey), and other such in these regions for thousands of years.

Then, there are Mellified Men, which my friend Anji told me about. She knows me too well to believe I didn’t really need to know about this. This practice was actually done in the Middle East (and apparently Egypt a bit, because Alexander the Great got to be honeyed as well), but was recorded with the greatest detail (that I could find) from Li Chen (same guy who I quote above). This is detailed in the Compendium of Materia Medica, and goes a little something like this:

In Arabia there are men 70 to 80 years old who are willing to give their bodies to others. The subject does not eat food, he only bathes in and partakes of honey.” When death overtakes the honey-loving subject, his companions “place him in a stone coffin full of honey where he macerates.” The body safely submerged, the coffin is sealed shut and inscribed with the date. “After one hundred years, the seals are removed. A [medicinal] confection is formed for the treatment of broken and wounded limbs.

Two important notes:

1. Although bits of these cannibalistic honey candies(that’s a bad word to use here, isn’t it?) mostly are listed as for external use, there is mention that ingestion will cure all that ails you.

2. These men were considered holy for their sacrifice.

This is from a version of Shennong Bencaojing (Shen-nung Pen-tsao Ching)

Myths and Folktales

It’s important to note that in India, lots of Hindu traditions depict Kamadeva as possessing a bowstring made of bees. Also, Vishnu, Indra, and Krishna all are:

depicted as bees sitting on lotus flowers. These gods are said to be madhava or "nectar born." Honey is also associated with the bliss of nirvana.

We also have this incredible narrative:

Let’s travel to the city of demons where a very furious demon named Arunasura lives. Each day, Arunasura went to the banks of the Ganges river where he practised many types of devotions to the Hindu creator god, Brahma, who he believed would protect him. He meditated and fasted and paid his penance for some tens of thousands of years until his body was withered, but a halo of light shone out from his body. For his sacrifice and devotion, Brahma blessed him with protection from two- and four-legged creatures; however, this inflated the ego and power of the demon who then planned to stage a war against the gods. Brahma and the other gods got together to figure out how they would defeat Arunasura, but while they were chatting, the demon and his army used their growing powers to possess parts of the cosmos – the Sun and Moon among other forms. With the situation so dire, the gods turned to Parvati – the Hindu goddess of fertility, love, beauty, marriage, children, devotion, divine strength and power. With her help, the gods decided to kill the demon with the use of SIX-legged creatures.

Parvati appeared on the battlefield and grew to a massive size, armed with a mace, trident, long sword and shield in her four hands. Concentrating with all her might, she summoned forth countless bees, hornets, wasps, flies, termites, mosquitos and spiders from the skies. They crawled onto her body and clung on, which transformed her into the divine form of Bhramari Devi. The now Bhramari sent all her insects to attack Arunasura, the demon, saving the day and the cosmos at large!

A good number of other Indian gods are also shown with bees or have bees in their narratives. You will also find these narratives in Pakistan, because India and Pakistan are partition states. Partition states are where a colonial power, in its final act of horror during the decolonization process, splits a nation into two. Other famous examples include Ireland/North Ireland and Palestine/Israel. This generally results in war and lots of death. You guys probably read the news too, so I don’t really have to tell you.

Bees are also sacred in Islam, and there are many mentions of bees and honey in the Qur’an. Here’s an example from An-Nahl (the Bees), which is a chapter in Surah 16 that extends for 128 verses. I got this translation from my friend Farah, and it’s much prettier and way less archaic than the one I originally selected:

Again, eat of all the fruits and insert thyself submissively into the ways of thy Lord. Drink goes forth from their bellies in hues, ones that are at variance, wherein is healing for humanity. Truly, in this is, certainly, a sign for a folk who reflect.

This is Brahmi, a bee goddess.

In Africa, there are numerous cool myths and folk tales across the many tribes and peoples of this continent. The San people believe that humans come from the sacrifice of bees, as such:

Bee was a kindly creature. One night, Mantis needed to cross a great, flooded river to reach his family, and asked Bee for help. Bee offered to carry Mantis on her back. She flew over the raging waters but was beaten down by a strong wind. Bee was dangerously close to the waves when she saw a magnificent flower floating on the water. Bee dropped Mantis onto the flower, fell beside her, and died of exhaustion. When the sun rose, curled up on the flower was the first human being – Bee’s sacrifice.

My personal favorites from this continent are the Kikuyu (in Kenya) people’s story of how hyenas got their limp (this is linked rather than pasted due to foul language) and the story of Kintu and Nambi, the first man, from the Baganda people of Uganda. This Bagandan myth is my favorite of all of them. The full text of their story is in the above link, and I’ve only copied the part related to the bee. In most of the versions I’ve read, Nambi transforms into the bee so she can guide him. This version doesn’t specify how the bee got there.

Once upon a time, there were no people in Buganda except one man called Kintu. He had one cow, which was his great friend and the only source of his food.

Up in the sky there was a lovely kingdom whose King was called Gulu. He had many sons and daughters. These children used to wait for a rainbow to touch the Earth, and then they would slide down it and stay a little while below, playing among the trees. However, they couldn’t stay long, because a rainbow very soon melts away in the hot Sun. If that happened, then they could not have climbed back home.

One day two of Gulu’s sons saw a rainbow touching the Earth, and they called to their sister Nambi to come with them. Nambi was a very beautiful girl, and King Gulu loved her very much. She went quickly with her brothers and slid down to the Earth.

The part of the Earth the rainbow touched was Buganda, where they saw Kintu sitting alone watching his cow graze. At first they were rather frightened, for they had never seen a man before. But they soon made friends with Kintu, and they stayed a long time talking to him.

Kintu told them how lonely he was. Nambi was very fascinated with Kintu and she felt pity for him because he was living alone. She promised to come back again and marry him so that he wouldn’t be lonely any more.

On their way back Nambi’s brothers reproved her. ‘Why did you say that? You know our father Gulu will never allow you to go away and marry Kintu, they said. Nambi’s brothers objected to the marriage because they said that the man did not know of any food except that which the cow yielded, and they despised him.

However, when they told their father Gulu, he suggested that they had better test Kintu before he consented to the marriage. Gulu then sent someone to rob Kintu of his cow.

For a time Kintu was at a loss what to eat. But he managed to find different kinds of herbs and leaves which he cooked and ate. Nambi happened to see the cow grazing and recognized it. She thought that her brothers wished to kill the man she loved, and decided to go to the earth and inform Kintu where his cow was.

She arrived on Earth and invited him to return with her to take his cow away. Kintu had no option but go to Gulu to demand his cow back. When he reached the sky he was greatly surprised to see how many people there were with houses and with cows, goats, sheep, and fowls running about.

When Nambi’s brothers saw Kintu sitting with their sister at her house, they went and told their father, who ordered them to build a house for Kintu. Gulu promised to give Kintu’s cow back and to consider consenting to the marriage of his daughter after Kintu performed certain tasks.

The first task was giving Kintu a lot of food which he had to eat and finish alone in a locked hut. An enormous meal was cooked, enough food for a hundred people, and brought to Kintu, who was told that unless he ate it all he would be killed as an impostor. Failure to eat it, they said, would be proof that he was not the great Kintu. He was then shut up in a house and left alone.

After he had eaten and drunk as much as he could, he was at a loss to know what to do with the rest of the food. Fortunately, he discovered a deep hole in the floor of the house, so he turned all the food and beer into it and covered it over so that no one could detect the place. He then called the people outside to come and take away the baskets.

The sons of Gulu came in, but would not believe that he had eaten all the food. They, therefore, searched the house but failed to find it. They went to their father and told him that Kintu had eaten all the food. He was incredulous, and said that Kintu must be further tested.

A copper axe was sent to Kintu by Gulu, who ordered him to go and cut firewood from the rock, because he did not use ordinary firewood. When Kintu went with the axe, he, ‘What am I to do? If I strike the rock, the axe will only turn its edge or rebound’.

However, after he had examined the rock, he discovered that there were cracks in it. When he hit the axe between the cracks, fire sparks feel out and lit the dry grass around. Kintu returned with the fire and clearly impressed Gulu.

Nevertheless, Gulu said that Kintu must be further tried before they could give their consent to the marriage. Kintu was next sent to fetch water and was told that he must bring only dew, because Gulu did not drink water from wells.

Kintu played a trick by making a pot which appeared not to be having water though it had. He then left it out on grass up side down and the next morning water passed as dew, and he carried it back to Gulu.

Gulu was most surprised and said, ‘This man is a wonderful being; he shall have his cow back and marry my daughter.’

Kintu was asked to pick his cow from the herd. This was a more difficult task than the others, because there were so many cows like his that he feared he would mistake it and take the wrong one. While he was perplexed a bee came and said, ‘Take the one upon whose horns I shall alight; it is yours.’

The next morning Kintu went to the appointed place and stood and watched the bee, which was resting on a tree near him. A large herd of cows was brought before him, and he pretended to look for his cow, but in reality he was watching the bee which did not move. After a time, Kintu said, ‘My cow is not there.’

A second herd was brought and, again, he said, ‘My cow is not there.’ A third, much larger herd was brought, and the bee at once flew away and rested upon a cow which was a very large one, and Kintu said, ‘This is my cow.’ The bee then flew to another cow, and Kintu said, ‘This is one of the calves from my cow,’ and the bee went on to a second and a third cow which Kintu claimed as the calves which had been born during the cow’s stay with Gulu.

Gulu was delighted with Kintu and said, ‘You are truly Kintu, take your cows. No one can deceive or rob you. You are too clever for that.’ He called Nambi and said to Kintu, ‘Take my daughter who loves you, marry her, and go back to your home.’ Gulu further said, ‘You must hurry and go back before Walumbe (Death), comes, because he will want to go with you and you must not take him. He will only cause you trouble and unhappiness.

I have special affection for myths and folk tales that involve rainbow bridges.

Lastly, a Nahua (Aztec; the word Aztec identifies a number of different peoples who all spoke Nahuatl, but which now primarily references the Mexica people who ruled the Aztec empire) tale about the use of bees by Quetzalcoatl so he could create humans for the 5th Sun (current era). He also got maize for us through this incident.

Quetzalcoatl was instrumental in creating people to populate the fifth age. In order to do this, Quetzalcoatl had to sneak into the underworld of Mictlan and trick Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl, the Lord and Lady of Death, into giving him the bones they guarded. Mictlantecuhtli would only give the bones to Quetzalcoatl if he could create a sound by blowing into a conch shell with no holes in it. Quetzalcoatl managed to complete this challenge through clever trickery. He had worms drill a hole in the conch, then filled the shell with bees. Quetzalcoatl’s actions successfully tricked Mictlantecuhtli into giving him the bones. But this was not enough for Quetzalcoatl. In an effort to further trick Mictlantecuhtli, Quetzalcoatl told him that he would leave Mictlan without the bones.

Before Quetzalcoatl could escape from Mictlan, however, his deception was discovered by Mictlanecuhtli. A deep pit appeared before Quetzalcoatl, preventing his escape. As he fell into the the pit, Quetzalcoatl was knocked unconscious and mixed up the bones he was carrying. After his eventual escape, Quetzalcoatl combined the now slightly shuffled bones with his blood and corn to create the first humans of the fifth age. The Aztecs used this allegory to explain why people came in all different heights.

This image depicts a portion of the story above.