you wake up as a commoner in ancient Egypt you know that you're about to spend another day
helping build the latest and greatest monument but first comes breakfast today is like every other
day so you eat what you always eat bread beer and maybe a couple of raw onions if you have any
when your shift finally ends you come back home for a simple dinner of vegetables bread
beer and marshmallows today we're breaking down the strange and shocking diet of ancient Egyptians
yeasts feasts and feet for the ancient Egyptians bread was the most important food in their
diet even if you weren't a good hunter you could always rely on bread to keep you alive
but bread back then wasn't like what we make sandwiches with today
there are a lot of differences between ancient and modern bread but the biggest one is probably
that the bread we eat today doesn't grind our teeth down like sandpaper most of Egypt's bread
was made with emmer wheat an incredibly tough grain that was difficult to turn into flour
to make the process easier bread makers would pour sand into the flour to help grind it up
so every time you took a bite of bread you were also getting a mouthful of coarse sand
but wait it gets worse since the dough was so tough it was common to use your feet instead
of your hands to knead it that's right your ancient hamburger buns would likely be infused
with dirty foot sweat if you like your bread to taste like a locker room smells ancient Egypt
is the place for you what's interesting about Egypt is that the higher classes ate almost
as much bread as the lower of course nobles priests and royalty weren't eating foot bread
instead their daily doses of carbohydrates were closer to a high-end pastry shop
if you attended a feast hosted for rich people you would be served sweet breads with honey and butter
cakes sweetened with figs and raisins and other high-class foods
home all professional servers danced around the room and topped off everyone's cups of wine
they even had access to an ancient version of marshmallows servants would gather mallow plants
from nearby marshes and boil them with honey after the mixture thickened up it was strained
and cooled before being served unfortunately they didn't have crackers and chocolate to make s'mores
though it's no surprise that the rich had access to better food but that didn't save their teeth
from being ground to dust no matter how much money you had if you lived long enough in ancient Egypt
your mouth would turn into a dentist's worst nightmare the world's most disgusting soup in
modern times starting your day off with a beer is usually only done by alcoholics and frat bros
but in ancient Egypt almost everyone drank beer with their breakfast every single day
it's not that they loved the party beer was actually a major source of nutrition and if you
were a poor person in Egypt beer was the cheap way to get some vitamins and minerals in your system
Egyptian beer was like a chunky alcoholic soup that had slimy pieces of fermented bread floating
in it and you know what that means their beer bread was also full of sand nothing
says refreshing like drinking sandy rotten bread juice despite how disgusting this sounds beer was
so popular in ancient egypt that it was used as a currency instead of paying for something at a shop
with money you could just hand the shopkeeper a couple of beers and be on your way beer jars
were so common that they became their own unit of measurement this would be like going to a gas
station and telling them you want three Budweisers worth of fuel and then paying for it with beer
modern delicacies in ancient times foie gras is a staple of modern french
fine dining but it was actually invented thousands of years ago by rich Egyptians
unless you're a really intense foodie you probably don't know how it's made so let's break down the
horrifying process first you have to domesticate ducks or geese and make them trust you then you
shove a tube through their nostril or mouth that goes into their stomach once the tube is in place
you get to use the technique called gavage or simply force feeding where you shove food directly
into the bird's stomachs until they're so fat that they resemble over-filled balloons with feathers
when the birds are fat enough they're killed and their livers are cooked and served with
oil and vegetables the Egyptian technique of fattening their animals later spread across
the mediterranean and in tyrone an ancient roman historian credited the Egyptians with giving them
the idea of fattening their cows to make their livers bigger he wrote in the first century a.d
we may employ the same artificial method of increasing the size of the liver of the sow
as of that of the goose it consists in cramming them with dried figs and when they are fat enough
they are drenched with wine mixed with honey and immediately killed
so if you ever find yourself eating the liver of a force-fed duck or goose
thank the crazy Egyptians who came up with the idea 4 000 years ago evil pork and satanic salt
have you ever eaten a ham sandwich what about pulled pork if so you may be visiting hell well
at least according to the early Egyptians the ancient Egyptians had an insane amount of gods
that they feared and worshiped but one of the earliest was set the evil god of chaos and rage
set's backstory is too long and way too graphic for youtube but just keep in mind that he is
associated with pigs and table salt and at one point had his testicles removed by another god
we don't know why or how pigs came to be linked with set but to the Egyptians they were evil by
association in upper egypt they were almost never eaten because it was believed that you may become
possessed by said or sent to help as time went on devil pigs were less of a concern and people
started eating them but chances are that it didn't taste great because most Egyptians
didn't have access to salt at the time and guess what this is set's fault too sea salt was also
associated with this evil eunuch so the Egyptians had to get their seasonings from somewhere else
one of the most popular places to harvest salt was the oasis of siwa siwa is an incredible location
with an almost mythical history alexander the great visited the area to meet with an oracle
and some scholars think he may be buried there and since the Egyptians couldn't harvest salt from the
sea siwa became a prime location to gather it here's a weird and slightly unrelated fact today
there are three hundred thousand date trees in the area which are tended by zagala or stick bearers
who have to remain celibate until they're 40 years old the interesting thing is that no one knows why
this rule was made like with the evil pigs from before sea salt eventually became okay to use
in ancient Egypt religious beliefs changed at a rapid pace and everyone probably just
decided that sea salt was way too good to be banned plus traveling to a distant oasis every
time you want to add some flavor to your dinner must have been a pain the hippo who killed a king
hippopotamuses are another animal that were briefly associated with set but later they were
hunted for food but hunting hippos is a bad stupid idea unless you're literally starving to death
and here's why in modern times hippos kill about 500 people every year making it one of the most
deadly animals on the planet now imagine how many more people they killed before guns were invented
but that didn't stop many's the first king of unified Egypt from trying to kill one for lunch
minis is a legendary figure in Egyptian history but he died in the dumbest way possible when a
hippo hunt went wrong and he was killed after ruling for 62 years we don't know exactly how
old he was but he would have easily qualified for a senior citizen discount he's not the only
ruler in history to be killed by his food but most of the time it's poisoned not tearing you
apart lim from limb the ancient Egyptians might have consumed some weird stuff but ultimately
their diet wasn't too far off from ours we still love beer pork and bread just different versions
luckily we can buy a loaf of bread that doesn't have foot sweat baked in or beer that doesn't have
the consistency of raw oysters but we really haven't changed much at all okay guys that's
all we have about the shocking strange diet of ancient Egyptians don't forget to like subscribe
and ring the notification bell so you don't miss out on our newest videos thanks for watching