Philosophy, Thoughts, and Musings – Page 30

Ferocious Irish Bees, the Book Of Aicill, and the Origins of Money

apis mellifera mellifera - northern dark bee - only native honey bee of Ireland — **For Ireland, there is only one native honey bee, a sub-species called Apis mellifera mellifera or the Northern dark bee. Photograph by Alvesgaspar.**

In The Origins of Money (Philip Grierson. The Origins of Money. Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol. 1, 1978, pp. 1-35), Grierson, in discussing the origin of monetary values, noted that monetary values pre-existed market economies and that monetary values were well-attested as existing in “customary” and “command” pre-market societies. He stated that “[i]n such societies [monetary values] provided a scale for evaluating personal injuries in the institution which the Anglo-Saxons termed the wergild, and it is in this institution that the origin of money as a standard of value must, I believe, be sought. The practice of wergild, that of paying a compensation primarily for the killing of a man but the term by extension covering compensations for injuries to himself or his family and household, is most familiar to us in its Indo-European setting” (p.12). Grierson proffers various supporting evidence for his thesis, but one linguistic and one quite trivial and ancillary struck my fancy.

Grierson’s linguistic argument presents concisely and rather convincingly the connection between monetary value and its compensatory use in its opening paragraph (although, I note, that his evidence, linguistic and otherwise, does not, of course, dilute other arguments for the origins of money that are often discussed that are unrelated to markets):

“Our best approach to the problem is through the testimony of language, often the most revealing key to the structure of early societies. It has naturally not been neglected by writers on early money. Everyone is familiar with the connection of pecunia and pecus – this was known to the Romans themselves – of fee and O.E. feoh, cow (mod. Germ. Vieh), of the derivation of shilling and rouble (rubl’) from verbs meaning to cut (skilja, rupit’. i.e., pieces of precious metal), of the relationship of talent, lira, and pound with the process of weighing metal. What we are concerned with, however, are not particular units but the notion of money in general and how it was first used. Much of our own vocabulary is borrowed from Latin by way of French and is not relevant to Germanic antiquities, though one may note in passing that pay comes through Fr. Payer from Lat. pacare “to pacify” ‘to make peace with,” and that behind the idea of appeasing your creditor lies the more revealing pacere, to come to terms with the injured party. Si membrum rupsit, ni cum eo pacit, talio esto, “If a limb is injured, unless peace is made with him (i.e., with the injured party, by paying compensation), there shall be retaliation,” was the Roman doctrine, as set out in the Law of the Twelve Tables” (footnotes redacted, pp. 15-16).

After exploring his linguistic argument, Grierson noted that it might be difficult to generalize from the available “compensatory law codes” for the pre-market Germanic, Celtic and Russian societies to other early pre-market Indo-European societies but he noted that the available codes provide an extraordinary wealth of detail. In this regard, he noted that the compilers of the codes “sometimes seem to be trying to provide for every contingency, of however improbable a nature.” “The other is their occasional frivolity, for some of their provisions, especially in the Celtic codes, must have been inserted more or less in fun. How else can one explain … the responsa of Cormac Mac Art and Cennfaeladh in the Book of Aicill providing compensations for bee stings – Irish bees were apparently of unexampled ferocity – but allowing a deduction of the value of a bee from the compensation if the bee was killed by the injured party? Clearly such provisions were not meant to be taken seriously” (p 17).

The unexampled ferocity of Irish bees had me immediately scampering to find out more about the Book of Aicill, its authors, and precisely what it said about Irish bees and how their attacks were to be compensated. Having examined the Book of Aicill, I would disagree that frivolity was intended. Either the section was intended in earnest or was intended as an example of how an arbiter should reason through similar, but perhaps more likely and just as serious, injuries. For here is what the pages dedicated to the ferocious Irish bees said in the book:

Injuries in the case of bees. That is, a hive is the fine for the blinding, and two hives for the killing of a person; and a book mentions the hive for the blinding, and it does not mention two hives for the killing; but as there is twice the ‘eric’-fine due from a person for killing a person that there is for blinding him, it is right from this, that it is twice the ‘eric’-fine which is due from a bee for blinding him that should be due for killing him. A man’s full meal of honey is the fine for drawing blood; a fifth of the full meal for an injury which leaves a lump, three-fourths of it for a white blow which leaves a sinew in pain, or green, or swollen, or red; if it be one or two of these injuries that are present, it (the penalty) is one-fifth with half one-fifth; one-fifth only for his natural white wound. A hive is the fine for the death-maim necessitating the removal of a limb, but if there be no removal of a limb, it (the fine) is a hive, less one-seventh; two-thirds of it for a ‘cumhal’-maim; one-third of it for a tent-wound of six ‘seds’; one-sixth or one-seventh part is to be added to it for the tent-wound of seven ‘seds.’

From the owners of the bees these fines are due for the persons. What shall be due from the persons for the bees? If the person has killed the bee while blinding him or inflicting a wound on him until it reaches bleeding, a proportion of the full meal of honey equal to the ‘eric’-fine for the wound shall be remitted in the case; the remainder is to be paid by the owner of the bee to the person injured. If the person killed the bee while inflicting a white wound upon him, they (the fines) shall be set off against each other. If the person killed the bee while inflicting a lump-wound on him, four-fifths of the fine shall be remitted, and one-fifth paid. If it was while inflicting a white wound which left a sinew under pain, or green, or swollen, or red, he killed the bee, three-fifths of the fine are to be remitted, and two-fifths paid. If it was while inflicting one or two of them (the wounds) he killed the bee, half one-fifth is to be remitted, and one-fifth paid. From the owners of the bees these fines are due for the persons, and from the persons for the bees. What shall be due from the owners of the bees for the animals injured, and from the owners of the animals for the bees? If the bee has blinded or killed the animal, what shall be the fine for it? The proportion which the hive that is due from the owners of the bees bears to the fine for their blinding the person, or which the two hives that are due for their killing him bear to the natural body-fine of the person, is the proportion which the full natural dire-fine of the animal shall bear to that fine which shall be due from the bee for blinding or killing it (the animal). One-half of what is due for killing it is due for blinding it, or inflicting a death maim which necessitates the removal of a limb; if there be no removal of a limb, it (the fine) is one-half, less half one fifth, if it be a quadruple animal; or one-half, less the half of one-half, if it be an animal of double. Two-thirds of this are due for a ‘cumhal’-maim; one-third for a tent wound of six ‘seds’; and an equivalent of a sixth or seventh part is to be added to it for a tent- wound of seven ‘seds,’ over and above what shall be due for the tent-wound of six ‘seds.’

What shall be due from a bee for making the animal bleed? The proportion which the full meal of honey that is due from a bee for making a person bleed bears to the hive that is due from it for killing him, is the proportion which the ‘eric’-fine for blinding or killing the animal bears to that which will be due from a bee for making it bleed, i.e. four-fifths is the proportion for its lump-wound, three-fifths for its white wound which leaves a sinew in pain, or green, or swollen, or red. If it be one or two of them that are inflicted, it (the fine) is two-fifths and half one-fifth. Two-fifths is the proportion for a natural white wound. From the owners of the bees these fines are due for the animals. What shall be due from the owners of animals for the bees? If the animal killed the bee while in the act of blinding it, or killing it, or inflicting a wound upon it until it reaches bleeding, a proportion of the ‘eric’-fine for the wound equal to a full meal of honey shall be remitted, and the remainder shall be paid by the owner of the bee to the owner of the animal. If it was while in the act of causing the animal to bleed it (the animal) killed the bee, they i.e. the bleeding of the animal and the killing of the bee, shall be set off against each other; or else, indeed, according to others, the difference which is between causing a person to bleed and causing an animal to bleed is the difference that shall be paid by the owner of the animal to the owner of the bee. If it was while inflicting a lump-wound on it the bee was killed, four-fifths shall be remitted, and one-fifth, the difference, paid. If it was while inflicting a white wound which left a sinew in pain, or green, or swollen, or red, the bee was killed, three fifths shall be remitted, and two-fifths, for the difference, paid. If the bee was killed while inflicting one or two of them (the wounds), two-fifths and a half shall be remitted, and two-fifths and a half, for the difference, paid. If the bee was killed while inflicting a natural white wound on it (the animal), one fifth shall be remitted, and four-fifths, for the difference, paid.

If there were many gardens, or if there were many bees, lots are to be cast to discover from which garden the injury was done; and when it shall have been discovered, if there were many possessions in that garden, lots are to be cast on them till the particular possession be discovered from which the injury was done; and when it shall have been discovered, if there were many hives’ in that possession, lots are to be cast upon them until the particular hive from which the injury was done shall have been discovered. And the reason why this is done is, that a bad hive may not be given in place of a good hive, or that a good hive may not be given in place of a bad hive; but that the very hive from which the injury was done may go for the injury. If it was intentionally or inadvertently in unlawful anger the person killed the bee, a man’s full meal of honey shall be given as compensation, and four full meals as dire-fine. If it was inadvertently in lawful anger he killed the bee, a man’s full meal of honey is given as compensation, and two full meals as dire-fine. If it was through unnecessary profit he killed the bee, only a full meal of honey is given as compensation. This is due from the bees of a native freeman for a person; the half thereof from the bees of a stranger; a fourth of it from the bees of a foreigner; there is nothing due from the bees of a daer-person, until it reaches sick maintenance or compensation, or, according to others, even when it does. From the bees of a native freeman this is due for a person; four-sevenths thereof from the bees of a stranger; two-sevenths and one-fourteenth from the bees of a foreigner; there is nothing due from the bees of a daer-person, until it reaches sick maintenance or compensation, or, according to others, even when it does. From the bees of a native freeman this is due for a cow; the half thereof from the bees of a stranger; a fourth of it from the bees of a foreigner; and there is nothing from the bees of a daer-person until it reaches sick maintenance or compensation, or, according to others, even when it does. From the bees of a native freeman this is due for a horse; half thereof from the bees of a stranger; a fourth of it from the bees of a foreigner; and there is nothing due from the bees of a daer-person until it reaches sick maintenance or compensation, or, according to others, even when it does. From the bees of a native freeman this is due; a fourth thereof from the bees of a stranger; a half and a seventh from the bees of a foreigner; an exact half from the bees of a daer person.
Ancient Laws of Ireland, Vol. III, Dublin, 1873, pp. 433-441.

The sophistication of the compensatory structure regarding damages for injuries from bees discussed in the Book of Aicill does not strike me as being as frivolous as Grierson suggested when one considers that the temperature of a cup of coffee from a fast food franchise which spills onto an elderly woman, an incident deemed by many frivolous, can justifiably make a successful $2.9 million tort claim in the American legal system (Andrea Gerlin. A Matter of Degree: How a Jury Decided That a Coffee Spill Is Worth $2.9. Wall Street Journal. September 1, 1994). So perhaps the sagacity and foresightedness of authors of the Book of Aicill were greater than Grierson and others perceived.

As to the authors, Laurence Ginnell (Laurence Ginnell. The Brehon Laws: A Legal Handbook. T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1894), provided a colorful, even if antiquated background, for them and the Book of Aicill in his legal handbook well over century ago. I quote liberally from therein:

The whole of the Book of Aicill is composed of the opinions or placita of two eminent men, illustrious in law and in other respects: The first was King Cormac mac Airt, otherwise called Cormac ua Cuinn; the second was Cennfaeladh the Learned. Cormac was one of the most deservedly celebrated of the monarchs of ancient Erinn. He was Ard-Rig from A.D. 227 until 266 (according to others from 218 until 260). He was, as his names signify, the son of Art and the grandson of Conn of the Hundred Battles, both monarchs of Erinn, and he was the father of Cairbre who may be said to have succeeded him, the very short reign of Eochaidh alone intervening. He was also the father of Grainne, celebrated in the Fenian poetry of Oisin and his contemporaries. In youth he was violent enough, perhaps unscrupulous in pursuit of power; but his subsequent life proved that his ambition rose from the solid basis of ability to rule men; and to this extent, as also by the use he made of power when acquired, he justified himself. He was a great reformer of the national institutions of his time, civil and military, including the Feis of Tara; and most of the traces of its former greatness now existing at Tara are attributed to his time. Consistently with his reforming spirit, he was a great patron of literature, art, and industry, the first of whose patronage we have undoubted evidence. He either wrote himself or procured the writing of several works on law, history, and other important subjects. Some of these works on subjects other than law were still extant so late as the seventeenth century, but appear to have been since destroyed or lost. Among the useful things for which the country was indebted to Cormac was the introduction of the water-mill. He had the first mill erected on a small stream on the slope of Tara. He was a man in many respects far in advance of his time. Though living long before Saint Patrick’s arrival, and king of a pagan nation, there is reason for thinking that he was a believer in Christianity before his death. He at all events ceased to believe in the pagan gods. …

According to one Gaelic authority Cormac was the author of the text of the Book of Aicill throughout, and Cennfaeladh afterwards modified and commented on the whole of it, besides adding some of the case law which had grown up in the interval. And I am inclined to think that this view is correct. However, the introduction to the Book of Aicill gives a different account, and naturally it is that usually accepted. It begins thus: “The place of this book is Aicill, close to Tara, and its time is the time of Coirpri Lifechair (Carbre of the Liffey), the son of Cormac, and its author is Cormac, and the cause of its having been composed was the blinding of the eye of Cormac by Aengus Gabhuaidech.” Owing to the loss of his eye, Cormac became incapable under the Irish law of retaining the sovereignty, “because it is a prohibited thing for one with a blemish to be king at Tara.” The sovereignty was transferred to his son, after a temporary usurper had been got rid of, and Cormac retired to Aicill, now called Skreen, near Tara. It is stated that in difficult cases he was consulted by his son the young king. However this may be, a great deal of the Book of Aicill is written as if in answer to questions submitted, and the answer in each case begins with the words, “My son, that thou mayest know.”

It was on account of this injury to his eye that Cormac expelled the Deisi from the district in Meath still from them called Deece, and drove them to Munster where they settled and gave their name to a district there also.

Having told where, when, on what occasion, and by whom, the book was first written, the introduction proceeds: “These were the place and time of it as far as regards Cormac. But as regards Cennfaeladh, its place is Daire Lurain (now Derryloran, in Tyrone), and its time was the time of Domhnall, son of Aedh, son of Ainmire; and its author was Cennfaeladh, son of Oilell, and the cause of its being composed was that part of his brain was taken out of his [Cennfaeladl1’s] head after it had been split in the battle of Magh Rath.” The Domhnall (Donal) in whose reign this occurred was monarch of Ireland and fought the battle of Magh Rath (now Anglicised Moira) in A.D. 634 (? 642) against Congal Claen, king of Uladh.

The foregoing statements are remarkably clear and explicit. They represent the Book of Aicill as the production of two authors, one writing in the third century, the other in the seventh. Notwithstanding this, Sir Henry Maine, the standard authority on ancient law, in his learned discoveries of “village communities” where they never existed, represents Cennfaeladh as assisting Cormac! Worse still, I find an Irish author saying gravely that Cormac was just the man to appreciate Cennfaeladh’s services! Granted that Cormac was highly endowed, still the power of appreciating services rendered more than three hundred years after his own death can hardly be conceded even to Cormac mac Airt; and if he had such power, any express recognition of Cennfaeladh’s services would then have been rather premature.
Laurence Ginnell. The Brehon Laws: A Legal Handbook. T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1894. p. 177.

In future, after considering the above, when confronted with a ferocious Irish bee, you may have occasion to reflect on the Book of Aicill and the ultimate origins of money. And, more importantly, if in future you are injured by said ferocious Irish bee, you will know what compensation you may seek for redress for the injury inflicted from the owner of the hive of the mischievous bee.

Giambattista Vico, Metaphorical Language, and the Darmok episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation

Giambattista Vico, an influential figure in the 18th century, has gained recognition for his work on historical imagination. His opus “The New Science,” published in 1744, has contributed significantly to various disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, literary criticism, and psychology. Vico’s views have influenced notable thinkers and writers, such as Wilhelm Dilthey, Karl Marx, R.G. Collingwood, and James Joyce. Understanding Vico’s perspective on metaphorical language sheds light on the significance of ancient literary and artistic works. This understanding resonates with the “Darmok” episode in Star Trek, where the encounter between two species with different languages reflects Vico’s ideas. The implications of language and culture on human advancement continue to be a subject of debate and analysis.

Of late, the insights and importance of Giambattista Vico, an eighteenth century Neapolitan, especially as they relate to historical imagination, have attracted my attention. To plumb the depths of the significance of his work, which are far deeper than I initially imagined, I obtained and read a translation of his opus Scienza Nuova seconda (or simply The New Science, the title under which the definitive version published in 1744 is known today). The translation I obtained was published by Yale University Press in 2020, translated by Jason Taylor and Robert C. Miner, with an introduction by Giuseppe Mazzotta. It is the third English translation of The New Science and is both well-notated and highly readable.

Book Cover: The New Science by Giambattista Vico

Giovanni Battista Vico was born in Naples on June 23, 1668. He received his education at local grammar schools, from Jesuit tutors, and at the University of Naples from which he graduated in 1694 as Doctor of Civil and Canon Law. Although he never succeeded in obtaining the chair of Jurisprudence at the University of Naples, which he long desired, he did obtain a professorship in Rhetoric at the University, which he held until 1741. Vico died in Naples in January 1744, at the age of 75.

In his lifetime Vico’s works were largely unremarked, however, by the nineteenth century his extraordinary insights began to make a significant impression on philosophers, historians, and other intellectuals. Vico’s ideas reached a wider audience with a German translation of The New Science by W.E. Weber which appeared in 1822, and, more significantly, through a French translation by Jules Michelet in 1824. Subsequently, Vico’s views influenced the work of Wilhelm Dilthey, Karl Marx, R.G. Collingwood, and James Joyce, who used The New Science to structure Finnegans Wake. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that “ … an appreciation of Vico’s thought has spread far beyond philosophy, and his ideas have been taken up by scholars within a range of contemporary disciplines, including anthropology, cultural theory, education, hermeneutics, history, literary criticism, psychology, and sociology. Thus despite obscure beginnings, Vico is now widely regarded as a highly original thinker who anticipated central currents in later philosophy and the human sciences.”

When I was searching for guidance on understanding Vico, I quickly found that some of the greatest intellects of the twentieth century had both lectured and written on him. For instance, the political philosopher Leo Strauss had lectured on him in Autumn Quarter 1963 at the University of Chicago. Audio files of the lectures are available at the University’s Leo Strauss Center website; however, the quality of the audio files is uneven and, in many instances, poor. But not to fear, a comprehensive and helpful written summary of the lectures is available here. More helpful, and the immediate impetus for this posting, is the second guide I utilized for Vico: the writings by the intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin collected in the work entitled, Three Critics of the Enlightenment – Vico, Hamann, Herder (with a foreword by Jonathan Israel), Second Edition, edited by Henry Hardy, which was published by Princeton University Press in 2013.

Bookcover: Isaiah Berlin's Three Critics of the Enlightenment Vico Haman Herder

From the latter work, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Berlin wrote a masterful section summarizing Vico’s attitude towards an appropriate historical understanding of humanity’s use of metaphorical language that immediately gave me a greater understanding and appreciation of both Vico’s genius and insight as well as brought to my mind with particular force many different literary and artistic works which I had previously experienced, but in a new and more vivid light. First, the lengthy extract from Berlin’s essay:

“We normally distinguish between the literal and the metaphorical use of language. To be literal is to call things by their appropriate names, and describe them in plain, simple terms; to use metaphor is a sophisticated or poetical way of embellishing or heightening such plain usage for the sake of giving pleasure or of creating vivid imaginative effects, or of demonstrating verbal ingenuity; this is usually considered the product of conscious elaboration which could, with enough effort, always be translated back into the plain or literal sense of which it is merely an artificially heightened expression. Metaphor and simile, even allegory, are not for Vico, deliberate artifices. They are natural ways of expressing a vision of life different from ours. Men once thought, according to him, in images rather than concepts, and ‘attributed senses and passions […]to bodies as vast as sky sea and earth’. What for us a less or more conscious use of rhetorical devices was their sole means of ordering, connecting and conveying what they sensed, observed, remembered, imagined, hoped, feared, worshiped – in short their entire experience. This is what Vico calls ‘poetic logic’, the pattern of language and thought in the age of heroes. The metaphorical use precedes – and must precede – the ‘literal’ use of words, as poetry must come before prose, as song is earlier than spoken speech; ‘the source of all poetic locution are two: poverty of language and need to explain and be understood’. Early man, animist and anthropomorphist, thought in terms of what we now call metaphor as naturally and inevitably as we now think in ‘literal’ phrases. Hence a great deal of what now passes for literal speech incorporates dead metaphors, the origins of which are so little remembered that they are no longer felt – even faintly – as such. Since the changing structure of a language ‘tells us the histories of the institutions signified by the words’, we can glean from it something of how their world looked to our ancestors. Because primitive man cannot abstract, ‘metaphor makes up the great body of the language among all nations’ at that time. Vico supposed that such men used similes, images and metaphors much as people, to this day, use flags, or uniforms, or Fascist salutes – to convey something directly; this is a use of signs which it would today seem unnatural to call either metaphorical or literal. Vico maintains that when a primitive man said ‘the blood boils in my heart’, where we should say ‘I am angry’, his ‘metaphorical’ phrase is a uniquely valuable evidence of the way in which such a man though, perceived and felt. What he felt when he spoke of blood boiling seemed to him – and indeed was – more directly related to his perception of water in a heated cauldron than our sensation of anger would seem to us today. The marvellous images, the immortal phrases coined by early poets are, according to Vico, due not to conscious flights of fancy but to the fact that the imaginations of such men and their capacity for direct sensations were so much stronger than ours as to be different in kind, while their capacity for precise analogies and scientific observations was far less developed. Hence, if we are to understand their world, we must try to project ourselves into minds very remote from our own and endowed with these unfamiliar powers. A world in which men naturally talk of the lip of a cup, the teeth of a rake, the mouth of a river, a neck of land, handfuls of one thing, the heart of another, veins of minerals, bowels of the earth, murmuring waves, whistling winds, smiling skies, groaning tables and weeping willows – such a world must be deeply and systemically different from any in which such phrases are felt, even remotely, to be metaphorical, as contrasted with so-called literal speech. This is one of Vico’s most revolutionary discoveries.”

A Roman copy of a Hellenistic image of the poet Homer, author of the Iliad and Odyssey, sculpted in white marble between 150 and 125 BC. Copyright ©Museo Nacional del Prado

Revolutionary indeed! Who cannot but grasp even a scintilla of the foregoing and not know that reading the Iliad or Gilgamesh will be even more instinctually meaningful and powerful if read with this understanding of how those works struck the ears and core of our ancestors so many thousands of years ago? And this, finally, brings me to the Darmok episode, which came to mind quite readily as I read the above on metaphorical speech.

A Trekkie I am not. However, I do recall being struck by the brilliance of the Darmok episode when I first saw it decades ago. The episode summary: Starfleet, a species known as speaking a literal language, interacts with a species (Tamarians) that uses a metaphorical language. As a result of the language disconnect, the two species are initially unable to understand each other with tragic consequences as they engage in an ‘epic’ struggle with a hostile predator. Ultimately, Picard, using the metaphorical language of Gilgamesh, communicates his understanding, such as it is, with the other species, thereby extending a tenuous bridge between the species … with optimistic portents for future relations. Star Trek often had ‘primitive’ species zipping across the universe with advance technology. As such, it is not surprising that a species capable only of metaphorical language would be capable of interstellar flight in the Star Trek universe. In Vico’s universe, however, such a primitive state of humanity (for he could conceive only of humanity) would not be capable of such advanced technological achievements.

An Atlantic article published in 2014 noted that many Trekkies also argued that the Tamarians would be unable to be so advanced given the limitations imposed by their metaphorical language. However, the author of the article, Ian Bogost, countered that the Tamarian language was sufficient, if compared, not to metaphor, but perhaps to allegory or, better yet, was understood as an abstraction, that is, a form of logic, which could be best described as a strategy. His argument is, to my sensibilities, convoluted, complex, and unattractive, but worth reviewing.

The Other Side of the Wall

Bench in the former Sunbury Asylum in Australia (Photographer Unknown)

The works of Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), author and artist, have inspired many over the years. Today, I share the following, which he wrote, for reflection:

THE MADMAN
It was in the garden of a madhouse that I met a youth with a face pale and lovely and full of wonder. And I sat beside him upon the bench, and I said, “Why are you here?”
And he looked at me in astonishment, and he said, “It is an unseemly question, yet I will answer you. My father would make of me a reproduction of himself; so also would my uncle. My mother would have me the image of her seafaring husband as the perfect example for me to follow. My brother thinks I should be like him, a fine athlete.
“And my teachers also the doctor of philosophy, and the music-master, and the logician, they too were determined and each would have me but a reflection of his own face in a mirror.
“Therefore I came to this place. I find it more sane here. At least, I can be myself.”
Then of a sudden he turned to me and he said, “But tell me, were you also driven to this place by education and good counsel?”
And I answered, “No, I am a visitor.”
And he answered, “Oh, you are one of those who live in the madhouse on the other side of the wall.”

Who shall I see when I look in the mirror?

All Abuzz about the Nexus Between My Readings: The Promised Land

Honey Bee alighting on a bloom. Photo by Michelle Reeves on Pexels.com

And the Lord said, “I indeed have seen the abuse of My people that is in Egypt and its outcry because of its taskmasters. I have heard, for I know its pain. And I have come down to rescue it from the hand of Egypt and to bring it up from that land to a goodly and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivvite and the Jebusite.”
Exodus 3:7-8. From Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible : A Translation with Commentary.

What particularly caught my attention after reading this passage was Robert Alter’s commentary on the milk and honey to be found in The Promised Land. He stated the following: “The honey in question is probably not bee’s honey, for apiculture was not practiced in this early period, but rather a sweet syrup extracted from dates. The milk would most likely have been goat’s milk and not cow’s milk. In any case, these two synecdoches for agriculture and animal husbandry respectively become a fixed epithet for the bounty of the promised land” (Alter, Robert (2019). The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, v. 1, p. 221, n. 8.).

Immediately upon reading this I was seized with a curiosity to know more about the sweet syrup extracted from dates and apiculture in the Holy Land. Let us begin with a research paper that helps me understand the comment above and discusses the earliest known archaeological apicultural remains in The Promised Land.

In 2010, Guy Bloch and others published an exciting paper detailing the oldest archaeological evidence related to bee-keeping ever discovered (Bloch, Guy; Francoy, Tiago; Wachtel, Ido; Panitz-Cohen, Nava; Fuchs, Stefan; and Mazar, Amihai. (2010). Industrial Apiculture in the Jordan Valley during Biblical Times with Anatolian Honeybees. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 107. 11240-4. 10.1073).

The work began by noting that: “[a]lthough texts and wall paintings suggest that bees were kept in the Ancient Near East for the production of precious wax and honey, archaeological evidence for beekeeping has never been found. The Biblical term “honey” commonly was interpreted as the sweet product of fruits, such as dates and figs.” This confirmed Alter’s comment, above. But then the paper proceeded to share its extraordinary findings:

“However, actual evidence for beekeeping in antiquity had not been found before the recent discovery of what appears to be a well-organized apiary at Tel Rehov in the middle Jordan valley in northern Israel. Tel Rehov is one of the largest Iron Age sites in Israel. A city 10 ha in area flourished there between the 12th and 9th centuries Before Common Era (B.C.E.). The apiary includes ≈30 hives (of 100–200 estimated) that were made as unfired clay cylinders. The hives have a small hole on one side for the bees to enter and exit and a lid on the opposite side for the beekeepers to access the honeycomb. Three rows of such hives were located in a courtyard that was part of a large architectural complex that was severely destroyed, most probably at the end of the 10th or beginning of the 9th centuries B.C.E. In terms of Biblical historiography, this period corresponds with the United Monarchy of David and Solomon and the beginning of the kingdom of northern Israel” p. 11240.

What is also extraordinarily interesting is that the authors report the discovery of remains of honey bees and their larvae inside the hives, which allowed them to identify the species of bee. The authors determined that the bees in the hives were A. m. anatoliaca, which currently resides in Turkey. This suggested to them that either Western honeybee subspecies distribution has undergone rapid change during the past 3,000 years or that the ancient beekeepers at Tel Rehov imported bees with a less aggressive temperament and superior honey yield (3 to 8 times more yield than the native species, A. m. syriaca). The possibility of importation cannot be easily dismissed given tantalizing hints of a developed apiculture transport practices, such as the following, cited by the authors:

“There is evidence that beekeeping was practiced in Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age (1); Hittite laws dated to the 14th–13th centuries B.C.E. contain severe punishments for thieves of bee swarms and hives (25). The Zenon papyri from Egypt suggest that transferring bees in portable hives or pottery jars was practiced in the third century B.C.E. (1). An Assyrian memorial stele dated to the mid-eighth century B.C.E. (about 100–150 y later than the beehives at Tel Rehov) describes the importation of honeybees from a country called “Habha,” probably in the Zagros or Taurus mountains (modern day southeastern Turkey
or northwestern Iran), about 300–400 km to the north or northeast of the land of Suhu on the Middle Euphrates (the modern border zone between Syria and Iraq)” pp. 11243-11244.

Today, apiculture is flourishing in The Promised Land. The Israeli Honey Production and Marketing Board says that apiculture and the trade in honey produced by honey bees can be traced back to 1882. The Israeli honeybee is actually of Italian origin, and is known as the Apis mellifera ligustica – a subspecies of the western honey bee. There are 529 beekeepers in Israel tending to approximately 120,000 hives. Their bees produce approximately 35 kilograms of honey per hive annually. Fortunately, honeybee populations are reported to be stable in The Promised Land, which serves as a transition to my next “connected” reading.

Newsweek reported earlier this week that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reviewed a petition calling for the the American bumble bee to be listed as an endangered or threatened species and found it “may be warranted.” The petition, which can be found here, was written and submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Bombus Pollinators Association of Law Students. The petition states, in part, in its executive summary, the following:

*Bombus pensylvanicus De Geer* (American Bumble Bee)

“The American bumble bee (Bombus pensylvanicus De Geer) is one of the most iconic native pollinators in North America. This highly adaptable pollinator once ranged coast to coast, foraging in the grasslands, fields, and open spaces in 47 of the lower 48 states. Like the endangered rusty-patched bumble bee, it is a generalist that provides essential pollination service to a wide variety of plants—including native plants and cultivated crops, across a vast range. Its loss will have considerable consequences to whole ecosystems and to crop production. Once the most commonly observed bumble bee in the United States, the American bumble bee has declined by 89 percent in relative abundance and continues to decline toward extinction due to the disastrous, synergistic impacts of threats including habitat loss, pesticides, disease, climate change, competition with honey bees, and loss of genetic diversity. In the last 20 years, the American bumble bee has vanished from at least eight states, mostly in the Northeast, and it is in precipitous decline in many more. For example, in New York it has suffered a catastrophic decline of 99 percent in relative abundance, and in Illinois it has disappeared from the northern part of the state and is down 74 percent since 2004. In sum, the American bumble bee has become very rare or possibly extripated from 16 states in the Northeast and Northwest; it has experienced declines of over 90 percent in the upper Midwest; and 19 other states in the Southeast and Midwest have seen declines of over 50 percent” p. 8.

That the American Bumble Bee would be so close to extinction, in the land that so many identify as the new promised land, is depressing. Which leads to one final, not bee related but promised land related reading: Charles Taylor’s book review, An America That Could Explain: On Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land.” The reader should read the review but for my purposes, I will share only the concluding thought of the review, as it seemed most appropriate for these troubled times:

In Caste, Isabel Wilkerson quotes Taylor Branch, the author of the magisterial Martin Luther King Jr. biography America in the King Years. “The real question,” Branch asks, “would be if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?” At last count, the answer is 74,222,958.

And to hold back the donkeys, Who has breath for that?

As they say: to stand up, and to sit down,
To protect the king’s son,
And to hold back the donkeys,
Who has breath for that?
Gilgamesh and Akka, Lines 24-27 (trans. Dina Katz)

Gilgamesh and Akka, by Dina Katz (Library of Oriental Texts, Vol. 1, STYX Publications, 1993), explores the short narrative poem in standard literary Sumerian which tells the tale of Gilgamesh of Uruk’s war against Akka of Kish.

In the tale, Akka of Kish demanded physical labor from the people of Uruk “to finish the wells, to finish all the wells of the land.” Gilgamesh, in response, asked the elders of Uruk for permission to wage war against Kish. The elders denied Gilgamesh permission to wage war against Kish, at which point Gilgamesh took his case for war to the able-bodied men of Uruk directly:

Since Gilgamesh, the Lord of Kulaba
had placed his trust in Inanna,
He did not take to heart the words of his city’s elders.
Gilgamesh before the able-bodied men of his city again
Laid the matter, seeking for words:
‘To finish the wells, to finish all the wells of the land,
To finish all the shallow wells of the land,
To finish all the deep wells with hoisting ropes,
Let us not submit to the house of Kish,
Let us smite it with weapons.’
The convoked assembly of his city’s able-bodied men answered Gilgamesh:
‘As they say: To stand up, and to sit down,
To protect the king’s son,
And to hold back the donkeys,
Who has breath for that?
Let us not submit to the house of Kish, Let us smite it with weapons.’
Gilgamesh and Akka, Lines 15-29 (Trans. Dina Katz)

The tale records that Gilgamesh and his able-bodied men went on to wage successful war against Akka and Kish.

Katz identified the passage that I am so enamored of, and which I quoted at the beginning of this post, as “puzzling.” She noted that a previous scholar felt that the expression was likely a “common saw” [i.e., a common Sumerian saying] whose meaning was lost to us. She noted, however, that the verbs “to stand” and “to sit” were often associated with the participants of the public assembly. It would appear, from the context, that the expression suggests having no more need or patience for further discussion due to appropriate consideration having been given (as in an assembly), pressing exigent conditions (as in a security situation), or exasperating circumstances (as in corralling or guiding donkeys).

Herman L. J. Vanstiphout, in reviewing Katz’s work in “A New Edition of Gilgamesh and Akka” (Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 119, no. 2, American Oriental Society, 1999, pp. 293–96) generally approved of Katz’s scholarly contributions and, with respect to the translation of the particular passage, took exception only with the wording regarding holding back the donkeys. He conceded that translating the line as “to hold back” “might surely be all right in a general sense” but seemed to suggest that something along the lines of “to hold the reins” may have been (more?) appropriate. For my part, I find the translation endearing, and intend to invoke the phrase regarding the donkeys, as translated, however perplexing it may seem, whenever I seek to end a discussion and perhaps give exasperated approval to a request in which I am in agreement.