Nymphaea lotus Coptic flag. Claire Waight Keller included the flower to represent Malawi in Meghan Markle's wedding veil, which included the distinctive flora of each Commonwealth country. In some parts of Africa the rhizomes and tubers are eaten for the starch they contain either boiled, roasted or ground to a flour after drying. The young fruits are sometimes consumed as a salad. The seeds are turned into a meal. The tubers or the seeds are used as a famine food in India. The ancient Egyptians cultivated the white lotus in ponds and marshes. This flower often appears in ancient Egyptian decorations. They
Dendera light pillar and a lotus flower ("Nymphaea caerulea"), spawning a snake within, representing aspects of Egyptian mythology. The "djed" pillar is a symbol of stability which is also interpreted as the backbone of the god Osiris. In the carvings the four horizontal lines forming the capital of the "djed" are supplemented by human arms stretching out, as if the "djed" were a backbone. The arms hold up the snake within the lotus flower. The snakes coming from the lotus symbolize fertility, linked to the annual Nile flood. In contrast to the mainstream interpretation, a fringe hypothesis proposes that the reliefs depict