PER MESUT: For Younger Readers

Busy Bees

- Hilary Wilson

The cartouche containing the King’s coronation name is introduced by the phrase nesu bity, an expression usually translated as ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’, but which has the literal meaning ‘He of the Sedge and the Bee’ (see above). This title includes one of the most striking of all hieroglyphs – the bee. The bee was used in the royal titulary from very early in the Old Kingdom and seems to have been adopted as an emblem or badge of the Delta region, Lower Egypt, with the sedge plant representing Upper Egypt, just as the rose and the thistle are used, for example on British rugby shirts, as emblems of England and Scotland respectively. Bees existed in the wild throughout Egypt but must have been more common in the Delta where extensive areas of marshes and pasturelands provided a great variety of flowering plants.