To the ancients, the white tree sap or liquid latex (mostly from Fig, Sycamore and Balsam) resembled mother’s milk, with its nourishing and life giving qualities, and its role in strengthening the immune system. This was apparently one of te reasons why the ancients regarded the WHITE MILKY substance as a Sacred or Divine substance.
In the ancient Egypt the Milk Giving Fig trees was assosiated with Hathor the cow-headed goddess who was the protectress of womanhood and the lady of turquoise. She was the goddess of love, tombs, music and songs. The Pharaohs were said to feed on Hathor’s milk just as the Babylonian kings had fed on the milk of Ishtar. Hathor was the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, and also the Nabatean or Arabian goddess Al Uzza. There was a logical reason to associating Hathor with the milk-giving plants, as the goddess herself was a Milk and Life giver.
Hathor was also a goddess of healing powers. Her early identification with the tree and the white milky substance indicate that the white sap or latex was extensively used among the shepherds for medicinal purposes. She was also called the "Mistress of Turquoise".
In tomb paintings, Hathor is often depicted as leaning down from the tree to pour wine and offer bread to souls in the afterlife. This offers an analogy with the Melchizedek wine and bread communion. Hathor was also worshiped as the Mistress of Drunkenness.
As Mistress of Inebriety, Hathor had dominion over all altered states of consciousness, so it would be reasonable to link her with an intoxicating fruit or narcotic sap. Unfortunately, the secret preparation method of the white sap to produce such psychotropic effects has been lost in time and will probably never be discovered.
The Hathor - Fig - Copper Goddess mythology and cultic practices were passed back and forth between Edom, Midian, Sinai, and Egypt. Egyptian turquoise/copper came from the Southeastern Sinai coast, from Temna near Aqaba, and from Wadi Fennan.
So could it be that Hathor association with the sycamore and the wild Sinai Fig trees that have intoxicating or consciousness altering effects was due to the Copper mineral rich soil or rocks??
Hathor was described both as the Great Wild Cow, and as the “vast heaven that holds the sun, the moon, and the stars.” These precepts must have been one of the shepherd kings’ abstract notions of divine power.
Shepherds must have felt divine presence in the wilderness of the desert, spending their days stalking camels and goats, which grazed on the medicinal and narcotic plants in the area; the shepherds drank the alkoloidal rich milk and ate wild intoxicating fruits. At nights, they gazed upon the stars, in front of fires created from the wood of the desert trees, and inhaled the narcotic fumes.
The shepherds only felt Hathor’s powerful presence each time they went into the wilderness, with their wild food and milk-induced high. They only felt Hathor’s wondrous presence each time they are out in the wild without no body.
So Hathor or Al Uzza was the archaic mother-goddess of this wilderness, the heavenly mother of all the nomadic shepherd cultures who inhabited the region of South Jordan and Sinai. She arose at the time of animal domestication, cheese processing, copper smilting, alchemy and transformation.
In the tropics the Ficus tree is important, as objects of worship in most indigenous cultures. The writing of the 1st century BC Greek historian Diodorus Siculus seems to mentions this fruit: "Being eaten, it has the power to effect fantasy. their priests will sometimes used the fruit to bring on such fantasy, which they say is the voice of their God."
Hathor, Mistress Of The Shepherds
& The Milk Giving Fig trees