Picture this: you are...
dead! And your soul is hanging around the ancient Egyptian afterlife,
and it wants a snack.
I think if I had to choose an afterlife food it would be Baskin-Robbin's chocolate and peanut butter ice cream,
but that was not really an option in ancient Egypt.
So one of their go-to after-death delicacies was bread.
So today we are making a bread depicted on the walls of a tomb nearly 4,000 years old.
Ancient Egyptian flatbread, this time on Tasting History.
So today's recipe is not really a recipe per se because while the ancient Egyptians loved their hieroglyphs,
and did use them to write about food, they didn't use them to leave us any
actual written recipes. Instead they left loads of depictions of food being prepared on the walls of tombs,
so we can use some of those depictions to recreate one of the many, many ancient Egyptian breads.
Today's is a bread depicted on the wall of a tomb near Luxor, T60 better known as Sennet's Tomb.
"Grind emmer or barley to make flour. Mix the flour with water to form a dough.
Knead the dough in large jars or by treading on it.
Take a ball of dough and shape it into a round.
Bake on coals or a griddle.
So this is one of your simpler breads, something that would have been eaten by the
majority of the population, but there were fancier breads available in ancient Egypt, ones that had
milk, and honey, and eggs and coriander. Like the ones found in King Tut's tomb,
and even lotus flower. And while today's recipe calls for a simple circular flatbread,
the Egyptians also had well-risen semicircular loaves
and on a wall in the Tomb of Ramsay's III
there is a bread depicted that looks like it was probably boiled before being baked, like a bagel.
It also shows breads being molded into all sorts of shapes: round, spiral, triangular, conical,
and even in the shape of a cow.
There have been breads found in the shapes of all sorts of animals like crocodiles and even humans,
and many breads were baked in molds similar to bread pans today.
In short ancient Egyptians loved their carbs and other ancient peoples would often refer to them
as bread eaters. In the Old Kingdom there were at least 15 different types of bread and by the
New Kingdom over 40. So frankly I could make a whole host of ancient Egyptian bread videos,
and maybe I will but today I'm going to focus on one loaf. Actually kind of two because
a lot of breads in ancient Egypt were risen but not all of them, and this one really works either
risen or not risen, unleavened. So for this recipe what you'll need is:
about two and a half cups or 350 grams of emmer wheat.
You could also use barley. Emer and barley were really the staples
of bread making during this time period.
About one cup or 240 milliliters of water.
Now depending on what grain you go with and how dry it is and how ground up it is,
the amount of water is really going to vary especially when you add in leavener which is going to throw everything off. So just be flexible.
A half teaspoon of salt. They usually added salt to their bread though
it was not depicted in the image, but for flavor sake we're doing it.
And one cup or 224 grams of optional starter.
So while I'm using starter or sourdough as my leaven which was used in ancient Egypt,
they also used a lot of other different leavening agents like sour wine, the yeast from
grape skins, and possibly from the beer that they brewed. All mass so the first thing that you need
to do is grind out your grain. Now if you use either a pre-ground grain, or an electric mixer
it's going to grind it much finer than they would have had, but it's also going to be a lot easier,
and frankly it's going to be a lot easier to work with. So I won't fault you if that's what you end up doing,
but I am using a hand grinder to better replicate the coarse grind that they would have had.
What I'm not going to do is add rocks to my flour, because that probably would have been
present in much of the flower of ancient Egypt.
The way that they ground the grain it often left a lot of grit in the flour,
and archaeologists can tell from the teeth of mummies that
besides cavities and gingivitis that they also suffered from ground down teeth, likely due to
the amount of grit in their bread.
Also even with this modern hand grinder that I used, a
sure took a LONG time to grind that flour.
In the Mastaba of Tai in Saqqara, it's written,
"Grind. Grind well.
I grind with all my strength. The servant sifts the flour and I bake the loaf myself."
And while I didn't use all of my considerable strength my arms were pretty tired, after grinding all that wheat.
So once you have your flour add the salt and the starter if you're going to use it, and the water.
Then mix it all together and knead it.
Now the wall depicts people either kneading it in jars,
or with their feet.
I'm not going to do either of those things. I'm going to knead it in a normal
modern way, but you get the same effect. The thing is emmer wheat doesn't have that much gluten,
so no amount of kneading it is going to get you that nice stretchy elastic dough that we
know and love today. It's also going to make it so that you're not going to get nearly the rise
that you would get from like a modern sourdough, but it is what it is,
but it is still really important to knead this dough because that's going to let the water incorporate into the flour,
and this flour soaks up a lot of water so you might need to add some as you go on.
You'll have to kind of just feel it out.
Then set the dough in a bowl and let it rise for a couple of hours.
Now like I said, this dough is not going to rise like a modern sourdough, but it will
get puffy. I actually left mine for a total of six hours. I did three sets of two hours,
and I would kind of punch it down in between each time, and it did get a bit of a rise, a bit
Now while your dough is rising iI would really appreciate you hitting that Like button
and tap that Notification bell so you don't miss any episodes of Tasting History,
and now let us look at this Egyptian Bread of the Dead.
[Grumble]
Imhotep does not like rhymes.
Fine. Everyone's a critic.
So just like you need food to keep you alive in ancient Egypt you also needed food to
keep you dead, or at least keep you happy when you were dead because if you were lucky enough to make
it to the Field of A'aru, or the field of reeds, it was essentially a mirror image of your life on
Earth, so you were going to need some food. Also I really hope that you enjoyed your life on Earth
because basically you're just getting more the same.
On the east wall of the tomb of Sennedjem
an artisan in the 13th century BC, a vignette shows he and his wife happily harvesting grain
and plowing their fields in the next world.
A lot less harp playing and fewer fluffy clouds
than our modern idea of heaven, and a lot more manual labor. Manual labor that required
sustenance and so Egyptian tombs are filled with sustenance:
loaves of bread, jars of honey,
beer, baskets of grain, and for the carnivorous crowd we can turn to King Tut's tomb which had
48 boxes of mummified meat including leg of veal, antelope shoulder, ducks, and geese,
and when it became impractical to keep filling a tomb full of actual food then you just depicted the food on the walls.
The walls of tombs are littered with images of stacks of snacks, instructions on fishing, and hunting.
My favorite thing about Egyptian hunting practices is that they often used cats, a skill
that neither of the cats that I live with have had any desire to pick up.
The wall images are also how we learn about how they cooked food, just like those of the bread making from which we adapted our recipe today,
and whether it was physical food or just images of, it food was more than a luxury
that you were bringing TO your afterlife. It was part of your key to get INTO your afterlife.
It was kind of like that hundred dollar bill that you slipped the bouncer outside of a fancy nightclub,
not that I have ever done that. I am nowhere cool enough to go to those places.
You still can't come in.
Nor would I ever spend $100 on doing that but I've seen it in movies, so I know what happens
but instead of a nightclub it's the field of reeds, and instead of a hoity-toity bouncer it's Osiris.
In the Papyrus of Ani of Thebes from around 1250 BC, one of the spells in the Book of the Dead
details exactly what you need to get in.
"In this Hall of Justice: one shall utter this spell pure
and clean and clad in white garments and sandals painted with black eye-paint and anointed with myrrh.
There shall be offered to him meat and poultry, incense, bread, beer, and herbs..."
And really that's just polite because this is Osiris's house, and it's rude not to bring something when you
visit someone's house, and this spell that you're supposed to recite after dropping off this goody bag
is one of the most famous parts of the Book of the Dead, it's called the negative confession or spell 125.
Basically everyone has gathered for the weighing of your heart, Osiris of course but also
Thoth, Anubis and the 42 judges who depending on the time period might include Horus, Hathor, Isis,
Ra, and a whole host of other gods. You have to remember that Egyptian history is really, really long.
Thousands of years. So any fact about Egypt might apply in one dynasty, but not in another,
and that includes things about their religion as well so the gods change. It's just what it is,
but it does usually happen that there are 42 gods there to judge your sins and each god is offended
by a different sin, and you need to admit those sins in order to move on, and there are some
super serious sins such as,
"Hail am-khaibit, who comes forth from Qernet, I have not slain men and women.
Hail, Her-uru, who comes forth from Nehatu, I have terrorized none."
But there are also some sins that are a little less serious though frankly just as important to having a functioning society
I haven't been eavesdropping. I haven't been stirring strife.
I haven't been prying into other people's business, and my favorite:
I haven't been deaf to words of truth. I really, really like that one.
Then there are a few sins that specifically have to do with stealing food.
You can't have stolen bread from children, because who would do that? You can't have stolen cake from
the spirits of the dead, and you can't have stolen grain in general. What's interesting is
that while many of the sins overlap, everybody's list of sins was rather unique to themselves
because what might be a sin for one person might not be a sin for another just because of their
place in society, or the time period that it was taking place. Also it being a negative confession
meant that if you did commit a certain sin then you didn't admit to it you just
left it out so if you don't specifically say I did not debauch the wives of other men
we're all gonna assume that you did.
But the most important thing when having your heart weighed was
to not lie because if you lied then you failed the test, and you would be devoured by Amit the Devourer of Souls,
but if you were tempted to lie then there's only one thing that can rat you out,
and that is your own heart sitting there on those scales.
Lucky for you there's a spell for that!
Earlier in the Book of the Dead, you have spell number 30 which basically tells that
little lump of cardiovascular tissue sitting on those scales to keep its bloody mouth shut. >:/
"O my heart which I had from my mother, o my heart which I had upon earth, do not rise up against me as a
witness in the presence of the Lord of Things;
do not speak against me concerning what I have done,
do not bring up against me anything I have done in the presence of the Great God Osiris."
Now provided that everything goes well your spells worked and you don't get devoured by
Amit the Devourer of Souls, then you finally get to see a glimpse of what your infinite future might be like,
and for the priest A'ani that meant some really mighty fine viddles.
"Let there be given unto me vessels of milk, and cakes, and loaves of bread, and cups of drink, and flesh in
the temple of Anpu... I will not eat the things which are abominations unto me. What I abominate is filth:
I will not eat it... for my bread shall be made of the white barley, and my ale shall be made from
the red grain of the God Hapi..."
Now having served tables for a very long time I am exceedingly
polite to servers, but if I wasn't I would totally steal that line.
Is that mustard on my burger?
I will not eat the things which are abominations unto me.
Take it back!
And refill my iced tea.
I have spoken.
Also, that last line "my ale shall be made from the red grain of the God Hapi". Hapi was
the Nile god and the god of grain and while rather androgynous in many depictions he's often shown to
have quite a big belly, and droopy boobs.
Be nice, it's his quarantine body, and he is working on it.
Now partly the depiction is because he represents fertility with the Nile but it's also possibly, and
I don't know this, because he ate too much of that grain he's the god of. Stick with me here.
The ancient Egyptians actually had a big problem with being overweight and diabetes
especially in the pharaoh class, because it seems that a diet of mostly beer and bread
not really good for the physique, especially if you're not working it off.
Luckily if you were building pyramids you did work it off, but you were paid in beer and bread.
Ten loaves of bread and a gallon of beer each day, and based on some of the names of the groups of people who worked
on the pyramids, it seems that they definitely enjoyed that beer, maybe all in one sitting.
Graffiti in the area mentions one group of workmen known as the Drunkards of Menkaure,
and while I wouldn't consider myself a drunkard, a glass of beer albeit modern beer
does sound like a mighty fine accompaniment for our ancient Egyptian bread.
So once the bread has risen as much as it will, form it into several flat rounds. Do the same for the unleavened bread.
Then get a griddle nice and hot and set the loaf on to cook for a couple of minutes before turning
it over to crisp up on the other side. What's interesting is that to this day in Egypt there is
a bread known as aish baladi, which is basically the bread that we're eating today albeit with a
lighter flour that's going to let it puff up more like a pita. This one you'll get a little rise,
not so much because of the emmer wheat. And while I don't know this for a fact I wouldn't be surprised
if the rather stackable loaves that we're making today aren't the same type of loaves of bread
that are mentioned in a document from the reign of Mentuhotep III.
"I advanced with an army of three thousand.
The battle arena extended to the river in desert, I gave every man a skin of hide and a long
stick to carry things as well as two buckets of water, and twenty loaves of bread for each day's ration."
I mean twenty loaves they've got to be pretty stackable to carry them around I would think.
I don't know. Anyway our bread's ready.
And here we are ancient Egyptian flatbread.
So they're not that different. This is the unleavened, and the leavened. The leavened definitely has
a little puffiness to it, but it's still pretty thin. Let's give them a shot.
Unleavened.
[*hums a ditty]
You know what I shouldn't have drank the beer, but there's some nice flavor there.
It's chewy, but it's good. It actually has a lot more flavor than I expected. I guess
that's you know it's it's a harder wheat to work with, but it's a more flavorful wheat
to enjoy because there's nothing else contributing to the flavor except for a little bit of salt,
but yeah I would enjoy this with some hummus dip it. Maybe put a little I don't know, cheese?
I ono. It's good. Now the leavened. I'm gonna rip it apart.
Yeah there's a little sponginess
to the middle. You know it's got like so many pieces still of the actual grain that
I'm surprised it even held together Let's give it a shot.
That one has even more flavor. That's the big difference. The texture is actually even more
chewy than the first one. Lighter and yet chewier which is kind of odd. It's not as hard or crisp
but there is more flavor that sourdough just- it livens things up even more.
So let me know if you want to see more ancient Egyptian bread or ancient Egyptian foods in general. It's kind
of like they had an entire cuisine for thousands of years there's plenty of food to go through,
and I also want to make ancient Egyptian beer which is very different from this stuff. Anyway
make sure to Like this video, Subscribe, and I will see you next time on Tasting History.