Download Food: Bread, beer, and all good things [6]

Food: Bread, beer, and all
good things [6]
Staple food
The staple food was bread and beer,
supplemented by onions or other vegetables
and dried fish.
Bakery with vats and cache of bread moulds
Old Kingdom
Source: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago [1]
They eat loaves of bread of coarse grain
which they call cyllestis. They make their
beverage from barley, for they have no vines
in their country.They eat fish raw, sun-dried
or preserved in salt brine.
Herodotus, Histories 2,77
Meat was not eaten often by the
fellahin [4]. Growing domesticated animals
for the sole purpose of meat production was
(and still is) expensive. People sometimes
supplemented their diet by hunting and
fowling and by gathering wild fruit and
roots. In the Tale of Sinuhe the protagonist,
who had become a tribal chief, recounts:
Loaves were made for me daily, and wine as
daily fare, cooked meat, roast fowl, as well
as desert game. For they snared for me and
laid it before me, in addition to the catch of
my hounds. Many sweets were made for me,
and milk dishes of all kinds.
Tale of Sinuhe
M. Lichtheim Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. 1, p.227
Temples, apart from having estates of
their own where they raised animals, were
also given large numbers of cattle by kings
and rich officials. A part of these meat
offerings was distributed to the needy.
When Seti I (c.1318 - 1304 BCE) sent a
thousand troops to the Silsileh quarry he
.... increased that which was furnished to the
army in ointment, ox-flesh, fish and plentiful
vegetables without limit. Every man among
them had 20 deben of bread daily, 2 bundles
of vegetables, a roast of flesh and two linen
garments monthly.....
Silsileh quarry stela
J.H. Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt part III § 207
Even after the increase without limit, less
than two kilos of often stale bread for hardworking quarrymen might seem less than
lavish. The menu of the king's messenger
was not quite as basic:
.... That which he had: good bread, ox-flesh,
wine, sweet oil, (olive) oil, fat, honey, figs,
[....], fish and vegetables every day.
Silsileh quarry stela
J.H. Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt part III § 208
Malnutrition was not rare, though the
caloric intake may have been sufficient most
of the time.
Menu of the rich
While the food of the common people
was barely adequate at best, and during the
recurring corn dearths sadly lacking, the
affluent certainly knew how to live it up:
Meat, water fowls, vegetables, fruit and
wine were part of their diet, as was the
ubiquitous bread in one of its many guises.
On the whole, Egyptians don't seem to
have overindulged; according to the
testimonies we have, they looked
remarkably fit.
On the other hand pictures of food laden
tables at banquets may be misleading.
Tomb pictures, while reflecting ordinary
life, generally depict an idealized reality.
Stephen Macko of the University of
Virginia analyzed hair from Middle
Kingdom mummies and 1000 AD Copts and
concluded that the ordinary Egyptian during
the Middle Ages ate more varied food than
the well-off Egyptian bourgeois during the
Middle Kingdom [5].
Cooking
The kitchen was often a corner of the
courtyard or on the flat roof; at any rate it
was open to the air and generally just lightly
them. For sweeteners they used honey, syrup
made of unfermented grape juice, and fruit
such as raisins, dates, figs, carob and the
like.
Utensils
roofed with branches.
Cooking was done in clay ovens as well
as over open fires. Wood was burnt as fuel,
and sometimes charcoal, even though it was
scarce. The quantities of charcoal mentioned
in the Harris papyrus or the diary of Medinet
Habu were small. It was transported in
baskets or sacks.
For lighting the fire a special kind of
wood was imported from the south. It was
very precious and even an important temple
such as the one at Karnak was allotted only
sixty pieces a month. The sailor in the Tale
of the Shipwrecked Sailor found it on his
island in the Red Sea
And on the third day I dug a pit and kindled
a fire in it on which I made first of all a
burnt offering to the gods, and then cooked
meat and fish for myself.
Food was baked, boiled, stewed, fried,
grilled, or roasted. But other than that very
little is known about its preparation. They
certainly used salt (Hmat) and oil and
probably onions, radishes and garlic as well
to add flavour to their other foods.
The Egyptian names of a few condiments
are known - provided they have been
identified correctly - eg. cumin [2] (tpnn tepenen), dill (jms.t - ameset), coriander
(Saw - shaw), and vinegar (HmD - hemedj).
Mustard was also grown in Egypt [3],
cinnamon and rosemary were among
Ramses III's gifts to the temples, Pliny the
Elder thought the Egyptian wild marjoram
superior to cunila.
They drank beer or, more rarely, wine and
may also have steeped their meat and fish in
What is known about kitchen utensils and
equipment stems from the items that have
been found in tombs. Storage jars, bowls,
pots, pans, ladles, sieves, and whisks were
all used in the preparation of food. The
kitchen tables on which the meat and fish
were cut up had three or four legs, but most
preparations were made with the dishes on
the floor and the cooks crouching or sitting
on the ground beside them.
Most of the commoners used dishes that
were made of clay, while the tableware of
the wealthy was often made of bronze,
silver, and gold. The food was eaten with the
tips of the fingers and the diners cleaned
their hands in little water bowls at the end of
the repast.
Info from: <
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timeline
s/topics/food.htm>