The honey-coated human flytrap
A story about Pepi II, an Egyptian pharaoh of the Old Kingdom, says he kept flies away by having a servant coat a naked enslaved person in honey. The insects, drawn to the sweet, sticky substance, would settle on that person instead of the ruler.
The method relied on a simple trade: make someone else the more attractive target. Honey can lure flies because it offers sugary food, and its stickiness can keep them lingering where they land. It did not eliminate the insects; it redirected them toward a person with no choice in the matter.
Comfort at someone else’s expense
The tale turns royal privilege into a vivid scene: Pepi II’s comfort was protected by treating an enslaved person as living pest control. That human cost is the point of the story’s shock. Its premise is not a clever household trick so much as an extreme example of how a ruler could shift an everyday nuisance onto people under his power.
The anecdote is often repeated as an illustration of the pharaoh’s hatred of flies, though the details are best treated as a reported story rather than a scene we can independently verify. Its memorable mechanism is plain: the flies were not driven away—they were lured to someone else.
