h he transliterates
_doudouiou_) in the medical papyri. In the Ebers papyrus "_doudou_
d'Elephantine broye" is prescribed as a remedy for external application
in diseases of the heart, and as an astringent and emollient dressing
for ulcers. He says the substance was brought to Elephantine from the
interior of Africa and the coasts of Arabia.

Mr. F. Ll. Griffith informs me that Gauthier's criticism of the
translation "mandrakes" is undoubtedly just: but that the substance
referred to was most probably "red ochre" or "haematite".[368]

The relevant passage in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind (in Seti
I's tomb) will then read as follows: "When they had brought the red
ochre, the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded it, and the priestesses mixed the
pulverized substance with the beer, so that the mixture resembled human
blood".

I would call special attention to Gauthier's comment that the
blood-coloured beer "had _some magical and marvellous property which is
unknown to us_".[369]

In his dictionary Brugsch considered the determinative [Symbol: circle
over three vertical lines] to refer to the fruits of a tree which he
called "apple tree," on the supposed analogy with the Coptic [jiji
(janja iota janja iota)], _fructus autumnalis_, _pomus_, the Greek
[Greek: opora]; and he proposed to identify the supposed fruit, then
transliterated _doudou_, with the Hebrew _doudaim_, and translate it
_poma amatoria_, mandragora, or in German, _Alraune_. This
interpretation was adopted by most scholars until Gauthier raised
objections to it.

As Loret and Schweinfurth have pointed out, the mandrake is not found in
Egypt, nor in fact in any part of the Nile Valley.[370]

But what is more significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew
_duda'im_ by [Greek: mandragoras] and the Copts did not use the
word [Coptic: jiji] in their translations, but either the Greek word or
a term referring to its sedative and soporific properties. Steindorff
has shown (_Zeitsch. f. AEgypt. Sprache_, Bd. XXVII, 1890, p. 60) that
the word in dispute would be more correctly transliterated "_didi_"
instead of "_doudou_".

Finally, in a letter Mr. Griffith tells me the identification of _didi_
with the Coptic [Coptic: jiji], "apple (?)" is philologically
impossible.

Although this red colouring matter is thus definitely proved not to be
the fruit of a plant, there are reasons to suggest that when the story
of the Destruction of Mankind spread abroad--and the