the amulets placed in the tomb with the
deceased, to secure for him the protection of the goddess.

*** Mariette, Abydos (vol. i. pl. 48 b, 53). To prevent
the animal from evading the lasso and escaping during the
sacrifice, its right hind foot was fastened to its left
horn.

Europeans are astonished to meet nowadays whole peoples who make use
of herbs and plants whose flavour and properties are nauseating to
us: these are mostly so many legacies from a remote past; for example,
castor-oil, with which the Berbers rub their limbs, and with which the
fellahin of the Said flavour their bread and vegetables, was preferred
before all others by the Egyptians of the Pharaonic age for
anointing the body and for culinary use.[*] They had begun by eating
indiscriminately every kind of fruit which the country produced. Many
of these, when their therapeutic virtues had been learned by experience,
were gradually banished as articles of food, and their use restricted to
medicine; others fell into disuse, and only reappeared at sacrifices, or
at funeral feasts; several varieties continue to be eaten to the
present time--the acid fruits of the nabeca and of the carob tree,
the astringent figs of the sycamore, the insipid pulp of the dam-palm,
besides those which are pleasant to our Western palates, such as the
common fig and the date. The vine flourished, at least in Middle and
Lower Egypt; from time immemorial the art of making wine from it was
known, and even the most ancient monuments enumerate half a dozen famous
brands, red or white.[**]

* I have often been obliged, from politeness, when dining
with the native agents appointed by the European powers at
Port Said, to eat salads and mayonnaise sauces flavoured
with castor-oil; the taste was not so disagreeable as might
be at first imagined.

** The four kinds of canonical wine, brought respectively
from the north, south, east, and west of the country, formed
part of the official repast and of the wine-cellar of the
deceased from remote antiquity.

Vetches, lupins, beans, chick-peas, lentils, onions, fenugreek,[*] the
bamia,[**] the meloukhia,[***] the arum colocasia, all grew wild in the
fields, and the river itself supplied its quota of nourishing plants.

* All these species have been found in the tombs and
identified by savants in archaeological botany--Kunth,
Unger, Schweinfurth