It is quite certain that the alcoholic fermentation of honey was known to the ancient Egyptians when history began.
Honey was traced in a mash of beer-bread of Eleventh Dynasty date (2000 BC) and it was certainly used in another Egyptian mash of Roman date (1st century AD) found in the Fayum.
Honey was the main sweetener in Egypt – sugar was still unknown. The people of this time valued honey highly thus it was commonly used as a tribute or payment. Honey was also used to feed sacred animals.
Not only used for the preservation of meat, but was also the most widely used medication. Of nine hundred remedies recorded in various papyri, over five hundred were based on honey.
As early the sixth dynasty an official named Sebni takes honey on his expedition to the country of the negroes to exchange it for their goods.
Both bees and honey were considered sacred in ancient Egypt and honey featured prominently in religious ceremonies, including offerings to the dead.
In about 1200 BC, King Ramses III offered the gods of the Nile tens of thousands of jars filled with honey, estimated to weigh about fifteen tons.
Beekeeping is thus an ancient activity. It was one of the important minor industries in ancient Egypt and honey is mentioned frequently in the ancient records, the earliest references to it that can be traced being of the Sixth Dynasty.
Egyptians learned to cultivate bees and even how to use smoke to drug them so that honey could be collected without paying the price of stings.
Honey in ancient Egypt
