THE SACRED POWER OF FAT AND HONEY IN SAN AND ANCIENT GREEK MYTH AND RITUAL

Abstract

In this paper, I attempt a comparison between the sacred significance of fat and honey in the myths and rituals of the San peoples of southern Africa and the ancient Greeks. As Biesele (1993) and Lewis-Williams (2015) have convincingly demonstrated, the creation narratives of the diverse linguistic groups which constitute the /Xam (San) peoples of southern Africa, arguably the first peoples to call this country ‘home’, reveal strong links between the gathering and possession of animal fat and honey, and access to spiritual power. In ancient Greek mythology, as is well known from Callimachus and many later texts (e.g., Apollodorus and Nonnus), the infant Zeus was fed on honey by the bee-woman, Melissa. Many fundamental rites in ancient Greek religion, as reflected in texts from Homer onwards—libations, some sacrifices, ritual offerings such as the ‘panspermia’, and funerary rites—all provide evidence of the Greek belief in the spiritual potency of fat and honey. I thus analyse the similarities and differences between the significance of the fat-honey nexus in these two religious traditions and reflect on cross-cultural comparisons, their history, and their purpose in contemporary South Africa.