Castorbean, קִיקָיוֹן, Ricinus communis

The Septuagint translates κολόκυνθᾰ (a kind of gourd); Justin Martyr renders σικυωνος (cucumber); The Peshitta’s šrwr’ dqr’’ refers to a gourd or a gourd-like plant.

Another Greek translation, attributed to Symmachusand Aquila, is κισσός, which accords with the Vulgate’s consistent rendering hedera. Both the Greek and Latin terms mean “ivy”. A translation attributed to Aquila and Theodotion is κικεωνα—apparently a transliteration of the Hebrew. Targum Jonathan likewise simply copies the word (קִיקָיוֹן).

In the narrative, the plant is said to grow in the vicinity of Nineveh (which lay on the east bank of the Tigris River in modern-day Mosul, Iraq). Reaching a sufficient height to provide shade for a human within a few days or less, it withered from worm infestation within several hours. While the narrative of Jonah is fanciful, the author and his readers were presumably familiar with the plant as one that is found in the Near East, can provide shade, and grows quickly. Herodotus (Hist. 2.94) describes what the Egyptians call κίκι in a manner that matches the castorbean, Ricinus communis.[1] The phonetic distinctiveness of κίκι and its similarity to קִיקָיוֹן leave little doubt that the castorbean is meant, this also being the modern scholarly consensus (Löw 1924–1934, 1:608–611; Feliks 1968, 136–138; 1997, 228–230; Zohary 1982, 193; Amar 2012, 177–180).

Dr. Giulia Francesca Grassi adds:

The Egyptian word kꜣkꜣ is interpreted as “castor” purely on the basis of Greek κίκι. Egyptian medical texts making no mention of its fruit, seeds, or oil and the determinative for “tree” never being used, the identification of kꜣkꜣ with “castor” (or a similar plant) is problematic (Germer 2008, 144).^[2] If the Hebrew qîqāyôn is an Egyptian calque, it does not necessarily signify “castor”—the translations reflecting this difficulty in never employing its equivalent; (no one word for “castor” is common across several Semitic languages, the possible but uncertain Akkadian šagabigalzu itself being a loanword from Kassite).

The translation “gourd” is puzzling, not corresponding to the floral description in Jonah. As Carsten Niebuhr reports, it was nonetheless still popular amongst Jews and Christians in Mosul and Aleppo during the eighteenth century: “Les Chrétiens et les Juifs de Mosul et de Háleb veulent, que la Khrerroa ne soit point la plante dont l’ombre couvrit Jonas, mais ils dissent, que c’étoit une sorte de citroüille Elkerrá qui a de très grandes feuilles, porte un fruit très gros et qui d’ailleurs ne dure qu’environ quatre mois” (Niebuhr 1774, I, 130–131). (The Syriac qrˀ and qrˁˀ, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic qrˀ, qˀrˀ and qrˁˀ, and Arabic qarˁ and qarˁatun all denote “gourd.”)

^[1] Dioscorides (Mat. med. 1.38) calls this plant Κίκινον.

[2] The Egyptian word for “castor” is almost certainly dgm (Germer 2008, 164–165)—which Imperial Aramaic renders as tqm.

Dictionaries (AhW, 1125; CAD Š/1, 61–62; DJBA, 1037; DNWSI, 1228; Dozy II, 332; Thes. Syr., 3720).

Amar, Zohar. 2012. Flora of the Bible. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass (Hebrew).

Feliks, Yehuda. 1968. Plant World of the Bible. Ramat-Gan: Masada (Hebrew).

Feliks, Yehuda. 1997. Trees: Aromatic, Ornamental, and of the Forest. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass (Hebrew).

Germer, Renate. 2008. Handbuch der altägyptischen Heilpflanzen. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Löw, Immanuel. 1924–1934. Die Flora der Juden. Vienna: Löwit/Leipzig: Kohut.

Niebuhr, Carsten. 1774. Description de l’Arabie: faite sur les observations propres et des avis recueillis dans les lieux même. Amsterdam: Hachette livre-BNF .

Thompson, R. Campbell. 1949. A Dictionary of Assyrian Botany. London: British Academy.

Zohary, Michael. 1982. Plants of the Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.