The grave-cloths which wrap the ancient Egyptian mummies are dyed with carthamine,[793] and quite recently fragments of the plant have been found in the tombs discovered at Deir el Bahari.[794] Its cultivation must also be ancient in India, since there are two Sanskrit names for it, _cusumbha_ and _kamalottara_, of which the first has several derivatives in the modern languages of the peninsula.[795] The Chinese only received carthamine in the second century B.C., when Chang-kien brought it back from Bactriana.[796] The Greeks and Latins were probably not acquainted with it, for it is very doubtful whether this is the plant which they knew as _cnikos_ or _cnicus_.[797] At a later period the Arabs contributed largely to diffuse the cultivation of carthamine, which they named _qorton_, _kurtum_, whence _carthamine_, or _usfur_, or _ihridh_, or _morabu_,[798] a diversity indicating an ancient existence in several countries of Western Asia or of Africa. The progress of chemistry threatens to do away with the cultivation of this plant as of many others, but it still subsists in the south of Europe, in the East, and throughout the valley of the Nile.[799] No botanist has found the carthamine in a really wild state. Authors doubtfully assign to it an origin in India or Africa, in Abyssinia in particular, but they have never seen it except in a cultivated state, or with every appearance of having escaped from cultivation.[800] Mr. Clarke,[801] formerly director of the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta, who has lately studied the _Compositæ_ of India, includes the species only as a cultivated one. The summary of our modern knowledge of the plants of the Nile region, including Abyssinia, by Schweinfurth and Ascherson,[802] only indicates it as a cultivated species, nor does the list of the plants observed by Rohlfs on his recent journey mention a wild carthamine.[803] As the species has not been found wild either in India or in Africa, and as it has been cultivated for thousands of years in both countries, the idea occurred to me of seeking its origin in the intermediate region; a method which had been successful in other cases. Unfortunately, the interior of Arabia is almost unknown. Forskal, who has visited the coasts of Yemen has learnt nothing about the carthamine; nor is it mentioned among the plants of Botta and of Bové. But an Arab, Abu Anifa, quoted by Ebn Baithar, a thirteenth-century writer, expressed himself as follows:[804]—“_Usfur_, this plant furnishes a substance used as a dye; there are two kinds, one cultivated and one wild, which both grow in Arabia, of which the seeds are called _elkurthum_.” Abu Anifa was very likely right. +Saffron+—_Crocus sativus_, Linnæus.