The topic

Throughout history, across the world, people have observed the industrious nature of the bee. This has given rise to the popular English idiom “busy as a bee,” a positive correlation of human labor with the insect’s hardworking nature and high productivity. Amazingly, ancient Egyptian texts reveal a similar correlation between the word for work/construction/labor and the bee.

This lecture aims to demonstrate the extent of ancient Egyptian understanding of bee behavior and society and honey production. Did they view the architectural perfection of the hive, the bees’ social order and division of labor, and their high productivity as an ideal model for Egyptian production and society?

The bee is strongly associated with royalty, featured prominently in the title given to all rulers: “King of Upper and Lower Egypt,” where the word for bee, biti, symbolizes Lower Egypt, the Nile Delta and the northern region of Egypt. While the Nile Delta environment was ideal for keeping bees due to the proximity to water and nectar sources, and ancient texts confirm regional beekeeping operations, could this symbolism also indicate an Egyptian understanding of the role of the queen bee as the absolute ruler over the hive and the king as a cultural equivalent of the royal bee?

This lecture assesses these questions together with a comprehensive discussion of the operations of ancient Egyptian beekeeping and honey production, and the different varieties and uses of the honey produced by the Egyptians. 

Email us at arce.dc.news at gmail dot com for a link to register for this event.

Our events typically last an hour—50 minutes for the lecture, 10 minutes for Q+A.

Alert: We do not allow recording or imaging of our presentations in any way.

The speaker

Dr. Shelby Justl is a Consulting Scholar in the Egyptian section of the Penn Museum, and an active museum educator and program developer. She teaches interactive workshops on ancient Egyptian daily life, archaeology, experimental archaeology, and cultural heritage preservation. She participated in several Penn Museum expeditions to South Abydos and has published her research and translation of an unearthed ostracon in the Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt.  

Dr. Justl is also a Lecturer in Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Her seminars focus on archaeology and the ancient world, ranging from a seminar on world mythology to another on archaeological/historical fakes, frauds, and hoaxes.

She earned an MA with distinction in Egyptology from the University of Liverpool, and a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations with a concentration in Egyptian Archaeology from UPenn. Her research interests include ancient Egyptian daily life, society, economics, and luxury goods and materials. She is currently editing her PhD dissertation—an analysis of administration and operations of the ancient Egyptian semiprecious stone industry from quarrying to processing and distribution—for publication as a book. At the same time, she is researching ancient Egyptian beekeeping and the honey industry for a second book project.