Author: pkevans

Three bee maidens with the power of divination and thus speaking truth are described in Homer’s Hymn to Hermes, and the food of the gods is “identified as honey”. The bee maidens were originally associated with Apollo, and are probably not correctly identified with the Thriae, a trinity of pre-Hellenic Aegean bee goddesses.

Honey, according to a Greek myth, was discovered by a nymph called Melissa (“Bee”), and honey was offered to the Greek gods from Mycenean times. Bees were associated, too, with the Delphic oracle and the prophetess was sometimes called a bee.

I am Shamash-resh-ușur, the governor of Suhu and the land of Mari. Bees that collect honey, which none of my ancestors had ever seen or brought into the land of Suhu, I brought down from the mountain of the men of Habha, and made them settle in the orchards of the town ‘Gabbari-built-it’. They collect honey and wax, and I know how to melt the honey and wax – and the gardeners know too. Whoever comes in the future, may he ask the old men of the town, (who will say) thus: “They are the buildings of Shamash-resh-ușur, the governor of Suhu, who introduced honey bees into the land of Suhu.”

— translated text from stele, (Dalley, 2002)