Wilkinson, John Gardner: Topographie of Thebes, and general view of Egypt: being a short account of the principal objects worthy of notice in the valley of the Nile, to the second cataracte and Wadi Samneh, with the Fyoom, Oases and eastern desert, from Sooez to Bertenice (London, 1835)

208 THE POMEGRANATE ROSE. [Chap. V-

tombs of Thebes, and is also mentioned as an
Egyptian tree by Pliny and other authors.* Of
the figf one species is still indigenous in the de-
serts of Egypt, and the pomegranate is not only
seen in the oldest sculptures of Thebes, but is
alluded to in the Bible,J and by several profane
authors, as a native of Egypt.

Its flower, previous to the discovery of the murex,
was used for its red dye, and was known by the
ancients under the names balaustium§ and rodon;
the rose || fpar excellence J whose fame is now only
called to mind by the name it gave to an island,
noted in earlier times for its colossus, and in later
days for having been the asylum of the Knights of
St. John.

The peach is included by Pliny^[ among the

* Ancient coffins and figures of sycamore-wood are very common
in the tombs.

t Called hamat, in Arabic, and the fruit qottayn. Pliny calls
it cottana (xiii. 5), a remarkable similarity in the ancient and
modern name. Ficus cottanum would not be an unappropriate
botanical appellation. The figs are small, as the historian
observes, but very sweet. Martial also calls them " parva cottana "
(lib. xiii. 28). The tree is common in Syria and the deserts of
Egypt, generally growing from clefts in the rocks.

J Numb. xx. 5.

§ Plin. lib. xiii. c. 19. He calls the tree " punicum malum."

|| Our rose has been produced by cultivation.

f Lib. xiii. c. 9. Diodorus (lib. 34) evidently confounds the
peach with the persea, when he says, " the Persians introduced
the peach from Ethiopia." Other writers have mistaken these
two. The persea was known in Egypt long before the arrival of
Cambyses.