136 i Flora Unveiled
1880s, Sir Thomas and his brother Daniel had amassed a goodly collection of exotic plant species,
including a few male date palm trees. Thus, he was able to provide Tylor with several specimens
of male date inflorescence clusters. (The Hanbury Botanical Garden is still in existence, although
it is now owned by the Italian government and administered by the University of Genoa. It has a
large collection of palm trees.)
- Mazar, A. (1990), Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000– 566 bce, Doubleday York;
Finkelstein, I., and N. Asher Silberman (2002), The Bible Unearthed. Simon and Schuster. - Jeremiah 44:15– 19: “However, all the men who knew that their wives were burning
incense to other gods, all the women standing by— a great assembly— and all the people who
were living in the land of Egypt at Pathos answered Jeremiah, ‘As for the word you spoke to
us in the name of Yahweh, we are not going to listen to you. Instead, we will do everything
we said we would: burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and offer drink offerings to her just
as we, our fathers, our kings and officials did in Judah’s cities and in Jerusalem’s streets. Then
we had enough food and good things and saw no disaster, but from the time we ceased to burn
incense to the Queen of Heaven and to offer her drink offerings, we have lacked everything, and
through sword and famine we have met our end.’
“And the women said, ‘When we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out
drink offerings to her, was it apart from our husband’s knowledge that we made sacrificial cakes
in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?’ ” (In some translation the word “drinks”
appears as “wine.”) - Judges 4:4– 5. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Augmented Third Edition (2007), M. D.
Coogan, ed., Oxford University Press. - Mandrake (Mandragora officinarum) fruits, referred to as “love apples” in the Song of
Songs 7:13, was used as an aphrodisiac in ancient Egypt. In an ancient Egyptian love song, the
male lover sings: “If only I were her Nubian maid/ her attendant in secret/ [She would let me
bring her love- apples/ when it was in her hand, she would smell it/ and she would show me] the
hue of her whole body. Keel, O. (1994), The Song of Songs: A Continental Commentary. Augsburg
Fortress, Minneapolis. - Translation from Fox, M. V. (1985), The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love
Songs. University of Wisconsin Press, p. 9. - Idem., p. 38
- The ancient Egyptian fruit tree “persea” (Mimusops schimperi), belonging to the fam-
ily Sapotaceae, is a smallish evergreen tree that produces small yellow fruit. According to
Theophrastus, it was common in Upper Egypt. - Translation from Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, p. 15.
- Bloch, A., and C. Bloch (2006), The Song of Songs: The World's First Great Love Poem.
Modern Library.
89. Ibid. - Augspach, E. A. (2004), The Garden as Woman’s Space in Twelfth and Thirteenth- Century
Literature. Edwin Mellon Press. - Aromatic essential oil used as a perfume and medicine since ancient times, from the flow-
ering plant Nardostachys jatamansi, a member of the honeysuckle family. - Bloch and Bloch, The Song of Songs.
93. Ibid.