According to Theophrastus , balanos was a most valued oil because of its mildness, and these oils from Egypt and Syria were in best repute. Balanos oil was one of the ingredients of stacte, a myrrh oil. A highly valued stacte was produced in Mendes, the Greek name for two large tells located in the Nile Delta. Originally this scent was made from a simple mixture of balanos oil, myrrh, and resin. Later on, stacte became a very complex composition when all kinds of other substances were added . Schweinfurth states that the seeds can be used as a soap substitute. The use of the fruit as a folk medicine has a long tradition in many African countries, including the use of aqueous extracts as a medicine for diabetes mellitus. It has been demonstrated that in the southern part of the Eastern Desert, the noninsulin-dependent type of diabetes mellitus is less prevalent than in, for example, the Nile Valley. This seems to be correlated with the non-Western lifestyle of the Ababda nomads, in which diet and folk remedies play an important role . The fruits are still collected by the Ababda nomads. They are also offered for sale at more specialized spice markets. Large numbers of fruits can be collected from a single tree, either from the branches or under the tree. The high sugar and oil contents also make the fruits and seeds attractive to animals. According to Osborne , camels and donkeys eat the fruits. This could be evidenced by the author at the Roman mountain settlement Khesm Umm Kabu,indoor plant table where many gnawed fruits were found under a Balanites tree .
According to the Ababda guide, gazelles or goats ate these specimens. Very often, an insect infects fruits. In such cases, a small hole with a diameter of about 3 mm is found at a point about one-third of the total length of the fruit. In some instances, fragments of the pupa of a scolytid beetle are still present in sub-fossil fruits. According to E. Panagiotakopulu , it may concern the date stone beetle , which is recorded from the date palm, although this has to be checked with modern material. Probably, an egg is injected with the oviposter in the still soft, undeveloped fruit. The larva feeds itself with the seed. When the metamorphosis is complete inside the fruit, the imago leaves the fruit through the characteristic perforation. This kind of infection is visible in both recent and sub-fossil specimens. From the 255 fruits that were screened in the 0.6 m² under a Balanites tree in Khesm Umm Kabu, 80 percent of the specimens proved to be infected. The perforation of the Balanites fruits has been recorded from many sub-fossil specimens and has been explained in different ways. Woenig states that the holes are made by a snout beetle , a point of view that is also held by, for example, V. Loret and conforms to the above mentioned observations. Keimer , mentioning several records that concern perforated fruits found in graves, is of the opinion that humans purposely damaged such fruits in order to disturb the magic power of the fruits. This act would have been comparable to the disturbance of other offerings that were found in the graves.
Another interpretation assumes that rodents such as mice and rats made the holes, as can be deduced from the traces of gnawing . Such traces seem to be present in the specimens depicted by Täckholm , but she is of the opinion that these holes were made by man to get the seeds for making balanos oil. Although the holes seem artificial in fruits from the Third Dynasty as presented in Darby et al. , these fruits certainly do not represent sugar dates, so extracting balanos oil is also out of the question. Keimer refutes the assertion of gnawing by rodents because perforated fruits were regularly found in closed graves. It may be concluded that most probably insects and rodents can be held responsible for the holes in the fruits and that these holes are not indicative of oil extraction. A practical method of oil extraction would be smashing the fruits to release the oily seeds. In Berenike, fragments of the sugar date have been frequently found, but it is seems more likely that the disintegration resulted from decay. Today, sugar dates are mainly found in the middle and upstream parts of the wadis of the Eastern Desert. Scattered trees are present in Wadi Gimal and Wadi Gadireh south of Gebel Nugrus, 100 km and 120 km north of Berenike respectively. Rawlison states that many trees grow along the road between Koptos and Berenike. Their presence on the coastal plain seems to be quite rare. Although Schweinfurth states that the sugar date is absent from the whole Egyptian coast, the tree has been evidenced by some records. One isolated specimen was found on the coastal plain near the mountains northwest of Berenike . Fairly large quantities of the sugar date are present in the Gebel Elba area and the wadis between these mountains and the desert east of the Aswân province , which finds its expression in the name “Hailab” date.
The suggestion by Täckholm that the sugar date had once a more widespread distribution is unconvincing as it is only based on the analyses of ancient honey containing abundant quantities of Balanites pollen. The number of sub-fossil sugar dates found at Berenike indicates that this fruit was available on a reasonable scale in the second habitation period . The fruits probably originated from the area south of Gebel Nugrus and the Gebel Elba.Beet is a vegetable that can be cultivated for its leaves and its roots. It was a well-established vegetable in classical times, as is evidenced from Greek and Roman texts and sub-fossil records. Early cultivation produced leafy forms as well as tuberous cultivars . Besides the cultivated beet , two wild taxa of beet are distinguished: B. vulgaris ssp. maritima Arcangeli, which occurs in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent, and B. vulgaris ssp. adanensis Ford-Lloyd and Williams, which is recorded from Greece, the south and west coasts of Turkey and Syria . The flowers of beet are clustered in spikelike inforescences. Each cluster consists of 3–5 flowers, and each flower produces one seed, which becomes fused by the fruit coat. The flowers of a cluster are connected to each other by the apical part of the flower stalks . At fruiting, these receptacles become swollen and when ripe, they fall to the ground as a unit. Consequently, the multi-germ clusters may produce several seedlings close to each other. It is striking that most of the germ clusters from Berenike and Shenshef concern two-germ clusters. Exceptionally, some three-germ and one four-germ cluster were found. On the basis of this low number of germs per cluster, two species come into consideration: B. macrocarpa and B. vulgaris. A third species, B. patula Aiton, has clusters with on average seven germs and is only recorded from a small island near Madeira . B. macrocarpa and B. patula are also classified on a infraspecific rank of B. vulgaris . It could be demonstrated that B. vulgaris ssp. adanensis, which is recorded from Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey, is highly constant in its low number of germs per cluster. B. vulgaris ssp. maritima and B. macrocarpa, whose distribution stretches from Western Europe to the eastern Mediterranean and, in the case of B. maritima, extends to the Indian subcontinent,plant growing stand have a low number of germs in eastern Mediterranean countries . Although B. macrocarpa and B. vulgaris are distinguished in particular by the morphology of the margins and tepals of the germ clusters, the sub-fossil fruit clusters from Berenike and Shenshef, from which almost all tepals had disappeared, did not allow an identification to the level of species. From an agricultural perspective, the clustering of germs is undesirable because several plants will develop, resulting in close competition for both water and light. As a consequence, seedlings have to be planted out, which is very time consuming. On the other hand, the germination of beet is prohibited by a number of chemical compounds in the seed, which may be responsible for a delay in germination of some seeds for several years. This phenomenon was already known in antiquity, and Theophrastus mentions that as a result of this only a few plants come up from a seed. Recently, alternative approaches have been developed to overcome the disadvantage of using multi-germ clusters for sowing.
Another possibility is to manipulate the number of fruits in a cluster by genetic engineering, which has resulted in races that produce monogerm clusters. Besides this economic qualification, the reduced number of germs per clusters also has an ecological implication. Whereas multi-germ clusters tend to produce perennial plants, plants that develop from low-numbered germ clusters are short living and may fulfill their life cycle within about 40 days . In this way, the plant is well adapted to arid conditions. Additionally, the bi-germ clusters have the advantage of a low level of competition for water as only a few seedlings are produced on the same spot. This germination pattern and life cycle fits in quite well with the extreme desert conditions. Also the brackish environment around Berenike and the high nutrient availability in trash areas will have been favorable for the growth of beet, which is a bad competitor but can profit from such extreme conditions in a ruderal environment. This is especially true for B. macrocarpa. Beet belongs to the very few commodities that are also mentioned on an ostrakon found in Berenike . This implies that edible parts of beet have been imported and consumed. The scattered presence of the beet clusters at Berenike and Shenshef suggests that they originate from a weedy species because seeds for sowing would not have been dispersed in such a way. It is possible that beet clusters entered Berenike and Shenshef with cereal harvests from the Nile Valley, after which they could have successively established themselves in both sites near dump areas where the sand is mixed up with organic compounds. Alternatively, the beet may have been intentionally cultivated in local kitchen gardens. In both cases the plant might have been exploited for its leaves only and would have produced germ clusters by itself. Only a few records of beet are available from ancient Egypt. The oldest one concerns a small apex of a flowering branch found in the Step Pyramid of Saqqara and is dated to the Third Dynasty . The second record concerns infl orescences with predominantly two-germ clusters from the Coptic monastery of Phoebammon. Both plant remains are identified as B. maritima ssp. maritima , and in both cases the flowering branches indicate a weedy character.The genus Capparis is represented in Egypt by three species: caper bush , C. sinaica Veill. in Duh., and C. decidua Edgew. . The presence of the leaves and the shape of the flower and fruit can easily distinguish the caper bush from C. decidua. Also the seeds are easily recognized by the absence of warty papillae. The caper bush is subdivided into four subspecies, which were formerly even treated on a species level. The difference between caper bush and C. sinaica is mainly based on the length of the sepals. Because the fruits and seeds of the caper bush and C. sinaica are quite similar, the plant remains from Berenike and Shenshef concern both species and are identified as C. spinosa L. sensu lato. More than 2,200 seeds of the caper bush have been unearthed at Berenike, all but one preserved by desiccation. Some fragments of the fruit were also found, some of which contained many seeds. The presence of both seeds and fruits does not exclude the possibility that the plants included a variety selected for its large, edible flower buds. Today, the caper bush is quite rare in the Eastern Desert, where it grows on rocky grounds and steep cliffs, for example the rocky sidewalls of wadis. Schweinfurth mentions a large population at the old Quseir and at several locations near Quseir and at several locations between Quseir and Berenike: Wadi Mrek , near Gebel Abu Tiyur and Wadi Gadireh .