The bean was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians.[1597] It is true that hitherto no beans have been found in the sarcophagi, or drawings of the plant seen on the monuments. The reason is said to be that the plant was reckoned unclean.[1598] Herodotus[1599] says, “The Egyptians never sow the bean in their land, and if it grows they do not eat it either cooked or raw. The priests cannot even endure the sight of it; they imagine that this vegetable is unclean.” The bean existed then in Egypt, and probably in cultivated places, for the soil which would suit it was as a rule under cultivation. Perhaps the poor population and that of certain districts did not share the prejudices of the priests; we know that the superstitions varied with the _nomes_. Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus mention the cultivation of the bean in Egypt, but they wrote five hundred years later than Herodotus. The word _pol_ occurs twice in the Old Testament;[1600] it has been translated bean because of the traditions preserved by the Talmud, and of the Arabic name _foul_, _fol_, or _ful_, which is that of the bean. The first of the two verses shows that the Hebrews were acquainted with the bean one thousand years before Christ. Lastly, I shall mention a sign of the ancient existence of the bean in the north of Africa. This is the Berber name _ibiou_, in the plural _iabouen_, used by the Kabyles of the province of Algiers.[1601] It has no resemblance to the Semitic name, and dates perhaps from a remote antiquity. The Berbers formerly inhabited Mauritania, where Pliny asserts that the species was wild. It is not known whether the Guanchos (the Berber people of the Canaries) knew the bean. I doubt whether the Iberians had it, for their supposed descendants, the Basques, use the name _baba_,[1602] answering to the Roman _faba_. We judge from these facts that the bean was cultivated in Europe in prehistoric terms. It was introduced into Europe probably by the western Aryans at the time of their earliest migrations (Pelasgians, Kelts, Slavs). It was taken to China later, a century before the Christian era, and still later into Japan, and quite recently into India.