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In Greece and Italy: Glaukos

Some have interpreted the resurrection of Glaukos in the legend as due to his having been buried in honey.

Glaukos, a son of the Cretan king Minos, while playing with a mouse, the symbol of death, once fell into a cask of honey. Minos long sought his unfortunate child, but in vain until he appealed to the oracle, who informed him that he who was best able to draw a comparison from a threecolored cow in Minos's herd would restore his son. Minos therefore appealed to the seer Polyidos, from the family of the renowned soothsayer Melampus. Polyidos likened the colors of the cow to the fruit of the bramble, which is green, red, and black during the various stages of its ripening. Upon this Glaukos was discovered but he was dead. Minos now demanded that he should be restored to life, and shut up the seer in a vault with the body. Presently a snake crawled towards Glaukos, and Polyidos killed it. Then came another snake, bearing an herb, with which it covered the dead snake, which at once came to life again. Polyidos laid the same herb upon the body of Glaukos and he stood up from his bier.

Democritus promised resurrection of the body if it was preserved in honey.

The power possessed by honey of preserving organic bodies immersed in it was well known to the ancients, and no doubt this was the origin of many of the superstitions regarding the miraculous powers ascribed to it. We know that even human bodies can be and doubtless have been preserved in honey and that the Greeks sometimes used it for this purpose, as Plutarch tells us of the body of Agesilaus, and as Josephus also relates concerning the body of Aristobulus. This general, having been freed from his enemies and sent to Syria by Cæsar in command of forces, was poisoned by Pompey's followers. "His dead body also lay for a long time embalmed in honey, till Anthony afterwards sent it to Judæa, and caused it to be buried in the royal sepulchres."

There is a Mohammedan legend to the effect that the body of Alexander the Great was placed in a golden coffin filled with honey.

The habits of the bee, as well as its remarkable products, no doubt helped establish its high place in the minds of the people. In contrast to the belief in the story of the carcass, Aristotle tells us the bee approaches nothing that is putrid, only sweet things; and from the earliest time there has been a belief in the purity of the bee that has given an added value to its honey and wax, particularly in religious ceremonials.