The ophrastus states that chickpeas differ in size, shape, color, and taste. He distinguishes a red, a black, and a white type, the last one being the most appetizing. This distinction corresponds quite well with the cultivars grown today. On the other hand, Theophrastus erroneously states that the chickpea does not occur in India, while the Indian archaeobotanical record of this food legume dates back to the third millennium BC . A substantial record of archaeobotanical finds is also available for the Middle East and the Mediterranean, but not for Ethiopia and Eritrea, where archaeobotanical research in Axum has only recently been started. Literary sources make mention of the cultivation in Ethiopia as early as AD 1520. Therefore, the origin of the chickpea in Ethiopia is still rather obscure. According to Van derMaesen , the chickpeas of Egypt and Ethiopia differ from each other, making it unlikely that this crop was traded between both countries. This would imply that the Egyptian chickpea was introduced directly from the Near East, whereas the transoceanic trade between India and East Africa might have been responsible for its introduction into Ethiopia and Eritrea. The chickpea is represented in Berenike by only 26 seeds. This number is in marked contrast with that of two other pulses, namely lentils and white lupin, which have been found plentifully in many samples. Wastage of the relatively small lentils is obvious because seed samples are contaminated with weed seeds and small stones, and cleaning such contaminated lentils automatically means some smaller specimens will end up in the soil. The presence of the large seeds of the white lupin can be explained by the manner of consumption. Eaten as a snack, the content of the seeds is sucked out,greenhouse tables whereas the empty seed coat is discarded. In contrast, the large chickpea seeds can be sieved effectively, resulting in almost no wastage.

The chickpea was probably imported from the Nile Valley.The colocynth is a common desert plant that belongs to the white bryony family , which includes watermelons, gourds, and squashes. The colocynth has slender, procumbent stems with small yellow flowers that produce fruits with a diameter of 5.5 to 10.4 cm . Although tendrils are present, plants have mostly a prostrate habitus because of the lack of suitable host plants. Only occasionally plants may be seen trailing over other plants. Schweinfurth even describes many specimens hanging down from the slope of Wadi Mursseefa, south of Quseir. Unripe fruits are green and juicy and quite heavy. During the ripening process, the fruits become yellow and dry out completely, by which process the seeds get released from the inner fruit layers. The fruits are now very light and can easily be dispersed by the wind. As soon as the fragile fruit coat becomes damaged, the seeds are scattered into the sand. Despite its close taxonomic relationship to the watermelon, both fruits and seeds of the colocynth are not fit to eat due to their extreme bitter taste caused by the glucoside colocinthine. According to the Ababda nomads, only donkey and gazelle eat the fruits when they are still juicy and when more preferable herbs are no longer present in sufficient amounts. Osborne states that they are also eaten by Barbary sheep, rodents, and, after being boiled or roasted, by Tibbu people. Personal observations confirm that juicy fruits are eaten by donkeys, but not by sheep and goats. It was also observed that holes were pecked in both unripe and ripe fruits, probably by carrion crows. The presence of colocynth depends on the rainfall during the winter period. When there has been sufficient rainfall, some hundreds of full-grown fruits can be collected in the nearby wadi branches.

After a dry winter, however, the number of plants is clearly reduced, and also the fruit diameter is relatively small. The colocynth still occurs in Wadi Shenshef and may have entered the trash deposits from this settlement by natural dispersal agents. Nevertheless, the occurrence of colocynth seeds in reasonable concentrations in most samples from Shenshef seems to exceed its presence as part of the seed bank and consequently indicates deliberate collecting. The rare occurrence of the colocynth in the immediate surroundings of this settlement can be explained by the presence of wild donkeys and gazelles, the former frequently seen passing the settlement area on special paths and the latter detected by the many hoof prints in the sand. The colocynth is also present in the many branches of Wadi Mandit in the coastal plain around Berenike, so the collecting of these fruits did not require a great deal of effort. It is possible that the residents of Berenike collected unripe, juicy fruits of the colocynth as donkey food. In addition to camels, these animals were used for transport in Berenike . Such unripe fruits can be stored for at least a couple of months without drying out. Ababda nomads also use the fruits for medical purposes, and in wadis where this species is abundant, carloads are collected and brought to Aswân to sell at the markets. Fruits that are still juicy are fastened to one’s heel to relieve the pain caused by rheumatism. The production of an ointment for treating camel scabies is mentioned in particular in relation to the Ababda nomads. This ointment is made by filling a pot with colocynth seeds and covering the pot’s mouth with some palm leaves. Then the pot is put upside down on a dish and covered with charcoal. During this process, black oil, resembling motor oil, drips out of the seeds onto the dish. After shaving the camel’s skin and removing the scab, the black ointment is then rubbed onto the wound of the camel. During his visits to the Gebel Elba area, Drar saw piles of colocynth fruits and a number of small ovens between Wadi Ibib and Karam Elba especially erected for extracting this tar, which they call “diwân.” Also Osborne often saw piles of charred seeds and remnants of fruits in wadis of the Eastern Desert together with an oven of stones and clay.

According to Girgis, cited in Zahran and Willis , this tar was also used for tanning skins meant for making water bags. Bottles with such tar are still sold at local markets, such as those of Shelateen. In the Sinai, the bedouins still use colocynth seeds to cure human constipation . Reasonable quantities of colocynth fruits are still collected in the Egyptian deserts and put up for sale in markets where they are sold for 1 Egyptian pound apiece. Both the reddish, sweet-tasting fruit pulp and the large seeds are edible. The fruit pulp has a low content of vitamins and minerals; the seeds are nutritious and contain a relatively high percentage of protein, fat, and carbohydrate. Today, in Arabic countries, several seeds are used as a snack, including seeds of watermelon, summer squash , and large seeded varieties of the sunflower , the two last ones being New World species. A special inedible variety of watermelon with small fruits is even exclusively cultivated for its seeds, especially in Nubia, from where it is imported to Egypt . The seeds are crushed between the teeth, the seed content is eaten, and the hard seed coats are discarded. In Egypt this is practiced by both Egyptians and nomads. About half of the sub-fossil seeds from Berenike and Shenshef are still whole and suggest that seeds were not eaten. The seed fragments found can be explained because old seeds easily disintegrate, especially along the lengthwise groove. As watermelons are well adapted to hot and dry climates,flood tray they might have been locally cultivated in kitchen gardens near Berenike and Shenshef. Because the fruits have a hard rind, they can easily be transported and might also have been imported from the Nile Valley. Today, they are, for example, available from the market in Shelateen. The storage life is maximized by leaving the long peduncle on the fruit . Unfortunately, no remains of peduncles or rinds have been found so far. Modern watermelons produce fruits up to 10 kg in weight. Such large-sized fruits can only be successfully grown if the stems creep along the ground. The tendrils produced in leaf axils indicate that we are dealing with a trailing plant so that in the past the fruits must have been much smaller. Watermelon is a native of tropical and subtropical Africa and has been cultivated in Egypt since predynastic times.Cocculus pendulus is a plant that grows in cliff-side habitats or in areas where other trees are present. In the latter case it becomes a liana. As the seed germinates in the soil, it produces a creeping stem that ascends when under a tree, possibly induced by the reduction of light intensity. The lower part of the stem, which is mostly fl at to some extent, may reach a diameter up to 25 cm, whereas the interweaving branches are much smaller. The plant is recorded from the Aswân Nile islands, all deserts, including the east section of Wadi Allaqi in the Nubian Desert, the Sinai, and the Gebel Elba area . The present vegetation around Berenike and Shenshef does not suggest that C. pendulus once grew in the vicinity of either of these places. The presence of small amounts of seeds in several trenches of both sites indicates that the edible fruits must have been imported regularly. Judging by the frequency of C. pendulus in the Gebel Elba, this area seems to be the most plausible place of origin. The fruits have a diameter of 5 mm. The stony endocarps are relatively large, so that only a small part of the bitter tasting fruit is edible. Arabs use the fruits for making an alcoholic beverage called Chamr el Madjnûne . Fruits are also used for medicinal purposes.

Another member of this plant family, namely, Anamirta cocculus Wright & Arn., is one of the species that according to Warmington might have been traded by the Romans. The dried, highly poisonous fruits of this plant cannot be confused with those of C. pendulus, but are still sold under the old name of C. indicus Wright & Arn. at Middle East markets, including the Harraz Drug Store in Cairo . During a visit to the Gebel Elba area in February/ March 1999, it was seen that most fruits fall when they are still green. Once the fruits are on the soil, they lose moisture and are difficult to collect because they are scattered in low densities and tend to sink in the loose sand when they are touched. Collecting fruits still attached to branches is also difficult, especially when the liana grows in large, spiny acacias. An effective way of harvesting would be pulling down the fruits with long sticks and collecting the fruits on mats or cloths. The archaeobotanical record of this species is scanty. The oldest record is from the Eastpans site A95/1-1 in the southwestern part of the Western Desert where some 10 charred seeds were found in a Middle Neolithic layer . Schiemann reported the presence of a single fruit of C. hirsutus Diel among samples of Grewia, taken from several baskets of Tutankhamen’s tomb. According to Germer , more fruits are present in the samples stored in the Dokki Agricultural Museum in Cairo. Recently, the author had the opportunity to check this sample and it turned out that the fruits of Grewia were contaminated with a fruit of juniper , a fruit of nabq , and two spikelets of grasses. Also, the other part of the Grewia sample from Tutankhamen’s tomb kept in Kew does not contain any seed of Cocculus, so the identification by Schiemann could not be confirmed . Another reason for doubting its identification is that C. hirsutus is not native to Egypt but must have been imported from either Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or tropical Africa. Moreover, there is no reference to specific uses of the small fruits. The coconut is valued for both the fruit and the seed. The fruit consists of three layers: the exocarp, the mesocarp, and the endocarp. The lignified, relatively thin endocarp is tightly connected with the thin seed coat. Initially, inside the seed coat there is a liquid endosperm, which, as the fruit ripens, gets reduced and forms a white edible layer against the seed coat.