Think your favorite food is “to die for?” Ancient Egyptians loved their sweets so
much that some pharaohs were entombed with piles of delicious snacks for the afterlife!
A rich assortment of food was available in ancient Egypt,
but the working-class people who built the civilization's monuments only got
to enjoy a limited range of them. If you were a laborer in ancient Egypt,
you'd typically only have two meals a day, and while simple, the food was hearty and filling.
Your morning meal would typically consist of bread, onions, and beer — yes,
beer for breakfast! — and your evening meal would include yet more bread and beer, along
with cooked vegetables and if you were lucky, meat. According to the History Museum of Canada,
meat was expensive in ancient Egypt and thus a rare treat for the working class. However,
fish were plentiful and anyone with spare time and a net or fishing line could obtain them,
so laborers in ancient Egypt often enjoyed fish in place of meat.
In ancient Egypt as in the modern world, the rich had far more options than their working-class
counterparts when it came to food. While bread and beer were also dietary staples for the rich
as well, wealthy people had access to costly treats rarely seen on working-class tables.
For instance, along with beer, wealthy diners in ancient Egypt enjoyed wine made from cultivated
grapes. Their diets were also more meat-heavy than those of their working-class compatriots:
They not only enjoyed pork, mutton, and goat meat from domesticated livestock, but game
meat such as venison or duck. And hunting was one food-related task the rich were happy to take on
themselves. Hunting had not only recreational value, but religious and symbolic importance
to ancient Egyptians, and nobles considered hunting to be a reflection of their power.
Ancient Egyptians had several ways to obtain that sweet sugar rush,
even entombing themselves with sweets for the afterlife.
"What's really amazing about Tutankhamun's dates is that
they were pitted, so he wouldn't have to chew around and throw out the pit."
For poor Egyptians, dates — which grow easily and abundantly in the region — were an easily
obtainable source of sugar; they were not only enjoyed on their own, but made into candies.
Other fruits, such as raisins, were also go-to choices for those craving something sweet.
The rich, however, also enjoyed honey — which was more labor-intensive and thus harder to
access. They not only used it in sweets like honey cakes but in main dishes as well — tomb
paintings reveal ancient Egypt's elites enjoying treats such as honey-roasted gazelle.
In much of the ancient world, beer wasn't just a pleasant drink to enjoy with friends but a
staple food, since fermentation enhances the nutritional value of grains by making nutrients
easier to absorb. While ancient Egyptians may not have known about this process,
they recognized enough about the benefits of beer to consider it
an essential part of their diet, serving it with nearly every meal.
But if your idea of good beer is a cold, foamy pint of IPA, a helping of ancient Egyptian
beer would almost certainly be a disappointment. According to History.com, it was usually made from
a preparation called "beer bread," a slow-baked cake of ground grains and yeast that was crumbled
into water and allowed to ferment for about 48 hours. The resulting brew was thick and cloudy,
and probably not the least bit foamy. But it was healthful and sustaining — and for ancient
Egyptians, it was drinkable cereal rather than an optional refresher.
If you think of farro as a trendy grain that only emerged in recent years to add extra
nutrition and chew to salads and pilafs, think again. Farro has a long history,
as Emmer — a form of farro — first emerged in Egypt around 10,000 years ago,
spreading to surrounding areas and later embraced by the Romans as their empire spread.
Farro was the staple grain in ancient Egypt and was used in a variety of preparations,
from bread to porridge to beer. And it's easy to see how farro became a cornerstone of the ancient
Egyptian diet: Not only did it grow easily in the fertile soil of the region, it was a nutritional
superfood, containing high levels of protein and fiber along with over 10 vitamins and minerals,
including calcium, magnesium, and polyphenols, which are thought to offer protection against
heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. With these life-giving properties, it seems only appropriate
that it was often placed in royal tombs to sustain their occupants in the afterlife.
If you lived in ancient Egypt, you'd better have a taste for onions,
because you'd encounter a lot of them. Onions — along with bread and beer — formed a virtual holy
trinity in the ancient Egyptian diet. According to History.com, they grew wild in ancient Egypt,
making them an easily accessible foodstuff for those of limited means.
But while onions were common and a staple of lower-class diets,
they were seen as far more than food for the poor. According to New Mexico State University,
they were an object of religious worship and were often embedded into mummified bodies,
painted on tomb walls, or included as burial offerings.
Ancient Egyptians had several reasons for their view of the humble onion: To them,
the onion's recursive layers symbolized eternity, its antiseptic properties were
thought to further promote eternal life, and its strong smell when raw
would surely be enough to revive the dead after their passage. For all these reasons,
rich as well as poor Egyptians looked forward to onions with their meals.
While the ancient Egyptian diet was primarily plant-based and almost fully vegetarian for
working-class people, meat was still an important item on tables of the time.
Wealthier people had access to domestic livestock and could enjoy meats such as beef and mutton.
And when it came to hunted game, pretty much anything was ... game. Records show
that ancient Egyptians enjoyed not only the usual suspects, such as rabbits and deer,
but unexpected meat sources including hippos, cranes, and even hedgehogs.
Fishing was also a popular way of obtaining animal protein among both the rich and poor,
and the practice of salting and curing fish for long-term preservation was
considered so important that only priests were allowed to conduct it.
Dairy products were not as big a part of the basic diet in ancient Egypt as they
are in modern Western diets, but they were sometimes enjoyed by the wealthy.
According to an article in the Alexandria Journal of Food Science and Technology,
dedicated pots and straining equipment for the production of cheese and other
fermented dairy products were found from periods as early as 3200 B.C.
Many of the cheeses known in ancient times are still being enjoyed by modern Egyptians. Karish, a
popular soft cheese made from skim milk, was known to be consumed in ancient times, as was mish,
a ripened spiced cheese. Egypt is also home to the oldest known sample of solid cheese: According
to Wisconsin State Farmer, during a 2013-2014 archeological expedition, a large jar containing a
desiccated block of white cheese was found in the tomb of a mayor of the ancient Egyptian city of
Memphis. The 3000-year-old cheese was made from a mixture of cow's milk and goat's or sheep's milk.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, ancient Egyptians were
pioneering innovators in large-scale agriculture. They took advantage of the predictable seasonal
flooding of the Nile River to plan and organize their crops, which included not only food such
as barley, farro, vegetables, and orchard fruit, but critical industrial crops such as flax and
papyrus. Indeed, they were such prolific farmers that they regularly produced more grain than the
country could consume, so grain exportation became a dependable revenue source for the country.
"Grain, and especially wheat, has been a major commodity in Egypt for centuries."
Many of the fruits and vegetables grown and enjoyed in ancient Egypt will be familiar to fans
of contemporary Middle Eastern cuisine. Ancient Egyptians cultivated legumes like lentils, fava
beans, and chickpeas; leafy greens such as lettuce and parsley; and root vegetables like onions and
garlic. While the earliest recorded fruit harvests came from wild, native fruits such as date palms,
as trade and contact with other regions increased over the years, ancient Egyptians adopted and
successfully cultivated fruit from other regions, including apples and pomegranates.
According to Atlas Obscura, bread was a staple of the ancient Egyptian table – so much so
that the language had at least 14 different hieroglyphs for bread. But the bread enjoyed
by ancient Egyptians was a far cry from today's standards. Whole grain flours of emmer and barley,
rather than modern wheat, were used, with techniques being rediscovered today.
"This is an ancient grain called emmer. This is the first cultivated grain in human history."
And while no specific bread recipes from the time exist, tomb paintings and funerary statues
reveal intriguing information about how bread was made and what it may have looked and tasted like.
Paintings reveal that some bread was baked outdoors in preheated ceramic bread molds,
while others were shaped into spirals and baked vertically on what appear to be spits.
The paintings also reveal details of the ingredients and their preparation: The spiral
bread included grape juice, which was added to promote leavening, and was boiled before baking.
Food preservation was a big deal for the ancient Egyptians. They not only
mummified their dead — at least those from families who could afford it — but
also the food the dead were to take with them to enjoy in the afterlife. Among the
mummified foodstuffs discovered in the tomb of King Tut's great-grandparents,
for example, were a leg of veal, several geese, ducks, pigeons, and a side of antelope.
Food preservation for the living was no less important. As historian Dr. Salima Ikram noted
in the Encyclopedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures,
ancient Egyptians employed a variety of methods to preserve meat and fish for long-term storage
and consumption, including drying, smoking, salting, and/or curing with honey, beer, or fat.
One of the ancient preparations still enjoyed today is jerky: Ancient Egyptian cooks would
sun-dry strips of meat and season it all ancientwith a blend of coriander, cumin,
and sesame seeds. And after thousands of years, Egyptians have not lost their taste
for the treat — beef and chicken jerky continue to be popular and easy to find in modern Egypt.