1000 Bread, 1000 Beer: Ancient Egyptian Food and Drink—Class 1: Geography, Food, and Drink: Intro

Added: 2026-05-04

[00:00:00]foreign hello everyone welcome to the blast Class A Thousand bread a thousand beer food and drink in ancient Egypt my name is Morgan and I am so excited to explore the world of ancient of ancient Egyptian food and drink with you over the course of the next five weeks so I wanted to start first with personal introductions my name is Borgo Moroni um but call me Morgan I graduated last December from Hopkins in the near Eastern studies Department I focus on Egyptian art and Archeology I'm a currently an assistant curator of Egyptian classical and near Eastern art at the Brooklyn Museum but the position I just started a few weeks ago um my dissertation focused on sort of artistic depictions and material objects related to Wine in the ancient Egyptian funerary context uh meaning sort of tombs and things like that and I also sort of looked at it through a gendered lens focusing on really like women's relationships with wine specifically um and so for example I included a tomb scene here from the tomb of pahiri um with some wine making but what makes this scene so unique is it includes a woman helping to pick the wine which there aren't many in ancient Egypt so I looked at things like that kind of analyzing art um I've also taught a class on Ancient alcohol in general at Hopkins so as you might Guess wine and ancient alcohol are some of my particular interests but I love food and cooking and gardening and I'm very excited to explore all of these interconnected aspects of Egypt with you I'm an art historian and an archaeologist above anything but I'm excited to also explore sort of scientific techniques in botany and culinary studies and all of the things that this class hopefully will sort of interweave together so um to sort of do some Logistics this is a lecture class that's recorded lectures which I'm sure you all are aware of at this point but there's also some experimental archeology um via optional recipes which are inspired by ancient Egyptian food and sort of recipes as far as we can say um lectures should be coming out Mondays and Fridays recorded sent via email um and the second week's video much will be sent out Friday but again it's related to sort of things you will email me so during the course of the week I hope you'll email me any questions or aspects you'd like to expand upon from this lecture or anything else if you're comfortable I'd also love you to share your images or Reflections you have on the weeks sort of recipes or anything else um and so I've also sent you all a Google drive folder which includes um recipe the recipes uploaded in PDFs um as well as places to post your photos and Reflections and things like that you can also email me um so if you could email me by Wednesday for this week that would be great to try to include it in Friday's video um I really want this course to be as collaborative as possible like within the context of the setting um and to think of it as a sort of a conversation you'd have around a dinner table or at the bar with your friends thinking about all of these aspects of food and drink I read through all of your responses about the class and we have such a variety of angles and experiences with Egypt and food and drink which I'm so thrilled about um so I think it's really going to be great so so yeah um let's kind of get started a little bit I'll give you a quick course overview of the things I hope we can kind of tackle in the next five weeks um basically this week we're going to kind of do a an introduction ancient Egyptian geography food and drink and kind of sort of go through some of the basics and kind of ground ourselves and everything um in week two we're gonna kind of talk about recipes and how things were made and think about the ingredients and production methods and all of the ways in which sort of the Egyptians made what they ate and what they had access to week three we'll kind of talk about economic and social aspects of food so no food as well food like what kind of food you might have access to depending on various aspects of your identity your class you know all of these things um week four we're gonna talk about religion and food and drink which is obviously going to be sort of intermingled with everything it's such a big part of Egyptian culture and lastly death and food and drink for our last class and throughout we're going to have sort of snack suggestions and experimental recipes that I hope we can all explore together um and what not and whatnot so um when I picked the recipes just so you to let you all know I really try to include things that only the Egyptians would have had access to in terms of ingredients and products and things like that but you know it can never be perfect so that's also something I really hope you'll reflect on just thinking about methodologies and production process disease and ingredients and all these things what would they have access to and and why or why not and and stuff like that so I hope it'll be you know very tangible learning experience um so this week until we get into today's class um I really hope we will explore sort of some general aspects of food studies which is something sort of Beyond egyptology sort of it's applied within anthropology in ancient studies and lots of modern studies in very different ways so we'll talk on a few ways in which we'll think about these things throughout the course and throughout related to Egypt um we'll kind of talk about the geography and climate of Egypt and why that's important in terms of food and drink a brief history of ancient Egypt very brief as most of you know you know some four thousand five thousand years of sort of things to think about so you know not a minimal amount um a brief overview of the main food and drinks that um Egyptians would have had access to and interacted with uh and then sort of the types of evidence available that we have to study food and drink in the past which includes sort of text artistic representations archaeological remains ethnography and ethno-archeology and what those words mean and experimental archeology which we're Chrono doing this this class which is fun um and then lastly we'll kind of reflect on this week's Meal which is sort of watermelons and cucumbers and bread um so yeah let's let's kind of sort of dive into some um just general aspects of themes of food studies that we'll be touching on this course so you know as human beings we we eat to live um but we also we eat for for pleasure um so so again it's necessary to to survive for us to have access to food and drink um and that's you know something that was very real to the Egyptians as was to most ancient peoples or just you know as humans in general um which is sort of what this famine scene I included here kind of reflects um in terms of you know if there was a bad flood or anything else with the Egyptians not having access to food and drink could be very much a reality that was dangerous um but the Egyptians also were known most of the time for their sort of abundance and access to a myriad of different foods and drinks and you know what is all arguably from good and intentional food and drink and cooking do many aspects of what uh make us human come so um it's kind of a mix of the two both it's a necessity but also something that is enjoyed um and is a pleasure uh so two major aspects to think about um another thing is Food and Health so food was obviously eaten for nourishment just like it is today um but the Egyptians are known for having you know medical texts that have been preserved um some of the oldest in the world which include as you can see here um figs and milk and aspects to sort of help yourself feel better um apologize for the fireworks um as well and um individuals who were known sort of as Physicians or people who looked out for your health we have here very a unique title of a woman who's the overseer of the female Physicians um which you know is a little enigmatic exactly what that means but again sort of someone who might oversee what you're ingesting in terms of health and all of that important stuff um we also sort of have food and drink in terms of expressing your personal identity which is you know in this slide I'm kind of trying to associate at least the ways we think about food and drink as um Americans or people in the modern age in general you know apple pie is so American but then also you know Pizza yes it's Italian but it also was an American invention and fortune cookies is also sort of this American Chinese invention as well so we have sort of things that are typically your culture but also very much nuanced and interesting and bringing in a lot of different kinds of aspects you know England's the same way Big Fish and Chips but also the national dish is Tikka Masala so um it's kind of something that weak identity is very sort of fluid and complex in the ways in which we use food in that way um and in the Egyptians sort of bread and beer was sort of the like very much important Staple in which you know everyone from pharaoh to you know farmer was consuming but you know that was also complex and different within that there was access to Wine meats and all these were fish and all these sorts of other things um and one for example in terms of your identity and drink that uh the thing that I wanted to bring up was this sort of famous Stila which is from the city of armana if anyone's familiar with that um so if you look at it you might see just an Egyptian man sitting here drinking from a straw and what's going on but if you look closely he um actually has a beard and a spear and sort of this interesting Kilt that he's wearing and he's actually a Syrian uh mercenary who is in Egypt sort of working and in his funerary Stila he wanted to remember remembered for his ethnicity and so in here he's drinking from a straw which you would never see in Egyptian art his beer um and so he's really exerting his personal identity through the way he consumes beer um and meanwhile you know his maybe an Egyptian wife she has an Egyptian name Ria is sitting there as well so this kind of interesting mesh of sort of these various identities and ethnicities and sort of beer kind of goes back to the way you drink it really can tell you like how and who you are in the ancient world um so in terms of other expressions of identity and other things food and drink can also be very much an expression of wealth or you know lack thereof but in sort of these two instances we see wine from the tomb of King Tut he had a ton of wine I'm sure everyone's heard of King Tutankhamun um some were from you know his like as old as his father's sort of big Jubilee and some were from his lifetime so sort of this idea of having these vintages of of wine and your tomb was very much a both status symbol and religious symbol as well and then here we have the Tomb of the vizier rakimura which is a bit earlier in time all of these individuals bringing honey and other Goods to to the vizier who was sort of second in command to Pharaoh um and again this like presentation of wealth and sort of these consumables and this is just one of many scenes in this tomb sort of demonstrating this so again food is a sort of what we call conspicious consumption which we'll probably talk about more in this class but yeah just something to think about um and finally food and drink as power which can mean so many different things again obviously wealth is power but um as well as Divine and religious power so here we have Ramses II um a pharaoh drinking milk um from a goddess presumably maybe the goddess hathor and he is becoming or receiving sort of the Divinity of her through through drinking that milk and we also have a individual making bread um as a sort of a statue that would have gone in a tomb to perpetually make bread and all of these you know beer for the deceased throughout the afterlife so this sort of power as well coming um through through this food and drink so these are just again some of the sort of things to think about I know um I've thrown a lot of names at you but I just want you to sort of get an idea of the very different ways we're going to kind of approach food and drink in general um but now let's kind of sort of take a moment and ground ourselves in sort of a sense of place um I know most of us in like Elementary School kind of learned the geography of Egypt and all of these things and unsurprisingly the geography and climate is one of the most important factors for designating what they ate and drank um Egypt is in the northeast corner of Africa um it's modern borders which are sort of highlighted in the the red map or in red on the on the map um are pretty pretty consistent with sort of how the ancient borders of Egypt were um in general the Mediterranean Sea lies to the north the Red Sea to the the East but we also have deserts on either side um and the Nile sort of runs up through through the desert um to the South we have what are called um cataracts which are basically Rapids which becomes difficult to navigate by a boat and to sort of individuals for to get have to usually get out and sort of move their vessels around um so with all of these kind of geographical boundaries you know it's often thought that Egypt was relatively you know isolated from Invaders and things like that however you know Egypt was conquered several times it had sort of very um interesting history with Nubia to the South which is modern-day Sudan in which you know cultures like Karma and the cushites kind of had their own very sophisticated um cultures in which they both you know conquered each other at certain points um and Egypt also sort of would go up and Conquer up to the Euphrates as you can see on this map in Syria throughout history so isolated yes but also very much interactions are happening throughout their sort of 4 000 year history um and importing food and drink was a major part of this wine was not indigenous or the Grapevine was indigenous to Egypt so wine that and the Grapevine were imported olive oil poppy things like that things from the south coming up um new like Ebony and incense less consumables but still like very important things like that so just you know Egypt was also very much a place where lots of movement was happening as well um one other thing to think about um is that the Nile is um runs from again the the highlands of Ethiopia up to the Mediterranean it has exceptional fertility has an annual flood that which well it had an ancient times with an annual deposit of silt um which very much uh strengthened its agricultural it's this very sort of Rich degree um you can see in the satellite image the extreme environments of Egypt um as well as a picture taken sort of sitting on the cliffs kind of seeing just the green that appears and the blue of the Nile um Egypt and Sudan are located in the Sahara but again this sort of the Nile runs right through creating this sort of flood plain in which their Agriculture and life was able to exist but there was very little rainfall less than you know average 10 million millimeters which is how it is today um and in general you need about 200 millimeters to have any kind of rain fed production of cereals and other Agriculture and so Egypt relied much on Agricultural and irrigation and the river for its agriculture um and again most of the population as it does today lived along this very thin strip up and down the Nile um so just you know very uh very unique kind of environment that was both sort of very extreme in its intensity but also its richness um and the Nile again runs from the south to the north and thus the naming is kind of reversed in our heads of modern our modern brains if you will the south is Upper Egypt the north is Lower Egypt um they're also Oasis um out uh in the desert where a lot of other interesting kind of food production also happens wine is very much like known for being produced from certain Oasis which is very interesting later in history um there's the delta in the north which kind of where the river runs up into the Mediterranean kind of looks like a Lotus um which you know agriculture was a bit harder because it was swampy there but still you know it would happen there as well um but in general why is Egypt such a good place to study the past or why you know is it so things are so well preserved especially food um is desiccation it being it's so dry I um it allows for great preservation and particularly you know comparatively with organic remains which is super very exciting um in terms of just seeing so many things that are can be so ephemeral in the archaeological record um but like I said most of the settlements are in the flood plain which is sort of that green area up and down um so yeah there you go excellent preservation there's some dried fruit right there and so um a lot of the domestic evidence we have is very limited because towns were built on top of each other close to the Nile so it's either under a modern Village ancient towns or under the floodplain then kind of has been built under by Silk by all the sea all these years and changes in the Nile over the thousands of years um so a lot of the evidence we're looking at is from tombs uh just to keep that in mind which will kind of like come back to for sure um but again there's this elephantini is one example it's an island down at the very south of Egypt down here um by sort of Aswan there it is um and it's a this is a picture of a rare example of a settlement and it's sort of showing what we call an archeology the stratigraphy so all these different levels of occupation um kind of on top of each other we call it a tell um in terms of seeing like all of this potential much of it in Egypt is kind of Out Of Reach so again a lot of the things we'll be looking at are from from tombs not from you know people's houses but there are some things as well but again something to think about throughout this course in terms of our just material that's available um but yeah so in terms of the seasons which are kind of important they had sort of three three seasons um in Egypt which are called Shamu parrot and akhet um and so they both had sort of personifications in terms of like sort of minor deities and also um sort of where they broke it up and they each were about four months you can see this is a hieroglyph for months so they're each kind of broken up um but the the Nile flood would come every year so again it would um have the annual rains and the highlands of Ethiopia and the Tigre region which would flood um the atabara branch of enjoying sort of the Blue Nile so the White Nile and sorry the Blue Nile and then the White Nile would come up um and and meet that as well in modern day cartoon and the two kind of go up and flood up into Egypt so that season was called aket um and so the flood was very much vital and important it would bring water every year um silt which is sort of this very fertile um fertile I saw in some ways and you can see here this is the Colossus of memnon if anyone's been to Egypt this is in modern day Luxor really far from the River today but back in pre-1960s it would be totally flooded so the Aswan dam was built in 1960s so it no longer floods the way it used to it's it's controlled now um but those annual floods were very very important for for ancient Egypt but it's always people always kind of glamorize it so I will say it was also something that brought like plagues and pesticides and things that not pesticides but sort of things that could make you ill so you know it was wasn't always sort of the most Charming thing I could also bring sort of dangers as well too much of a flood or too little of a flood where also things you always wanted to sort of Ensure in terms of having a good harvest and being healthy and all of those things so in general it was relatively consistent but you know Nature's unpredictable and so yeah something to keep in mind um the other two seasons were the parrot which we say like coming forth the growing season and then Shamu the harvest season and the flood would usually come around you know late June mid-july um so sort of our summer and then they would kind of recede by maybe September and things would start growing and then the Harvest would be kind of in you know March or so in terms of our calendar um but something to remember is that during the flood individuals who were farmers were often sort of conscripted not sort of but were conscripted to work and do huge Monumental labor projects from building the pyramids to things like that because you weren't able to sort of farm during that period so a lot of the pyramids and temples were built during these very hot times in Egypt when you weren't able to farm because of the flood so the one last thing I want to touch on um is this concept of Maat which she is the goddess of sort of stability and Truth we can see very tiny little uh picture of her here this is the king study of the first sort of offering stability to the god Amun in the New Kingdom so mod is kind of this idea of Egypt being able to sort of stay within this cyclical nature of having the flood come every year and a good harvest and able to sort of feed its its people and all of these things and she was very much sort of stability and and what you wanted um was to keep mat in order and to keep sort of this concept of of again stability um which is very much part of sort of the Egyptian mindset and concept is that is the word for like chaos and what you don't want so um the agricultural sort of processes and all of these things were tied into mod and keeping it in balance for sort of the good of of Egypt in general um so yeah I'm sure something we will return to but just kind of touching on it briefly um so sort of a very quick introduction to to the geography and climate um and now sort of the history don't get bogged down by all these dates we'll kind of go through each of these briefly um but Egypt is kind of divided into time periods and within those what we call dynasties which is kind of a term or concept created by um a priest named uh menetho and he sort of made sort of the different the different dynasties within kingdoms um he was uh sort of Greek living in Egypt and but I wanted to show this picture of Ramsey's the second sorry with his father so I do the first innovidos it's a what we call a Kings list and all of these are cartouches right here um with different names of the kings that they sort of want to remember in their history so the Egyptians very much had a sense of sort of Kings in history themselves um and sort of from that we've slowly over thousands of years going to build our own chronology with other sort of aspects as well but I'm going to sort of briefly touch on each time period just to get you familiar with the names like I don't want to kind of get bogged down in it because it obviously is a whole course in itself um but we're going to talk kind of like very early all the way up through sort of the Islamic period but touch things briefly um so just to kind of I'm gonna talk I think more about this next week but just the sort of Paleolithic Nile Valley the origins of the Egyptian State um just important to remember that there have been sort of humans and hominids um in Egypt since we've existed it all pretty much um and we potentially some of the earliest evidence goes back to 300 000 BCE um with some stone tools um we certainly have evidence of cave drawings that have been dated to you know 17 000 years ago um so you know people have been in Egypt in a for forever but also it was a place you know when people were leaving Africa obviously it was sort of a place to travel through as well so lots of movements and things like that um uh so just you know something something to keep in mind but we'll talk about I think this a bit more next week in terms of the development of domestication and Agriculture and things like that um but sort of terms of things in which we're going to look at the Egyptian unification happened around 3000 BC and kind of what that means is um Egypt was sort of divided into several small little cultures and kingdoms um you know around the like 3500 BC and so and slowly they kind of from the south eventually united into this one Kingdom of you know Egypt Kemet that um was relatively stable for the next you know 3 000 years uh so the sort of pre-dynastic again was these various you know indigenous Egyptian cultures um living and ancient Nubia as well as it was all kind of wasn't really separate it was one sort of thing but when Egypt was United by you know someone some call it Narmer which is what this Narmer palette here is kind of symbolizing the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt um that happened around 3000 BC um but during sort of pre-dynastic Egypt this sort of pottery and basketry and various implements for storing food appear we have um right before unification the earliest preserved evidence of beer and then wine that's happening um tomb UJ is a tomb that has imported wine from Lebanon which is super interesting Egypt is too hot for wine so it had to be imported first before they kind of started growing it um but again agricultural takes hold probably around like seven thousand six thousand BCE um and so this was a period of sort of Egyptian culture and art kind of forming itself as well as sort of agricultural and settlement happening until Egypt became unified um as sort of one country up and down the Nile from about you know Aswan all the way up to the delta um yeah so the early dynastic period is when sort of the first kings and queens ruled Egypt um and this was the period at least for our interests where there was a huge amount of wine and food and all sorts of luxury goods put into tombs um conspicious consumption as its finest all of these things that were buried um here's some example of wine vessels in the Tomb of maranith who probably ruled um uh with her son Dan but also potentially by herself there's this second Dynasty Elite tomb would look at all of these vessels is incredible the amount of things that were put into these tombs a lot of them were excavated at the turn of the century so you know we have mixed um knowledge of contexts and things like that um but again we have the first imported wine happening Vineyards are being established we have earliest evidence of figs and grapes and you know more beer production things like that so everything during this period was mainly built in mud brick which moves us sort of to the um well first this meme which is again uh being kind of silly but you might have heard these terms Old Kingdom Middle Kingdom New Kingdom ptolemaic um sort of just again the ways we're dividing things um but the um the one with the pyramids the Old Kingdom was when uh we first see Monumental stone structures the Pyramid of Jose at zakara is the earliest Stone complex in the world and you know the first pyramid um but again during this period period we also see um what we call offering lists in which there this is we can see nepher iabbid she was a princess from the time of Khufu who's the king who built the Great Pyramid possibly his daughter she has this beautiful that's in the Louvre that has these are all the names of incense and figs and wine and what we call an offering list put in your tomb for for things you might need in the afterlife so these really start appearing during the Old Kingdom and tomb scenes really expand um obviously the pyramids and all these things are built it was a very State heavy building project period of time for sure um but then we have the first intermediate period which might have come around from droughts and famine so again food being um a very vital part of holding a sort of State together during this time period um Middle Kingdom is a time that's sort of known for great literature and art and intricate jewelry and things um we're gonna look at a lot of wooden tomb models and things like that and um and a lot of those sort of date to this period in which we see sort of individuals making bread or counting cattle or all sorts of things um that would have been put in a an Elites individual's tomb to kind of you know it do do these tasks for them so um an important period but also one in which they built their pyramids with mud brick unfortunately so this is what a lot of you know them look like as opposed to the older ones from the the Old Kingdom so um but this is sort of the Middle Kingdom and then it again also collapses um with sort of the invasion of the hexos and the second intermediate period who were individuals from the North and Syria who come in and um world modern day Levant and come in and take over Egypt but eventually the New Kingdom Rises up from Thebes which we'll kind of focus on um and is reunited Egypt is reunited again um and lots of things happening on the slide but just kind of remember this new kingdom is when um hot Chef suit if you know that name ruled um here she is offering wine jars um the god a moon is very important so a lot of building projects for him and a lot of like food offerings and and what not happening um there was a king Tut which we've mentioned akhnatan who is his father and all of these things happening Ramsay's the great um in general the New Kingdom in terms of food was a time when there was a lot of sort of International Exchange happening Egypt was conquering parts of what we call the Levant sort of Syria Palestine um Israel Lebanon and all of these places um and bringing back sort of wine and all sorts of things um oil pomegranates and possibly chicken were introduced during this period um as well as poppy uh this is potentially imported from Siri from Cyprus so it's kind of an international age in terms of food and drink and things that were happening in Egypt was extremely wealthy as well so um it's we'll be looking at a lot of things from this time period as well so um but it eventually does collapse um in a sense of that the libyans from the West you know where Modern Day Libya is kind of come in and take over and there's several different sort of people overlapping local dynasties ruling during this period called the third intermediate period um a lot of again many foreign uh groups in of are coming in um including again the libyans but also for the 25th Dynasty the cushite Kings they're um the Kings who were ruling over ancient Nubia and they come in and do this um very interesting fantastic interesting archaeising of Egyptian art sort of going back to sort of the way things looked in the Old Kingdom so we have here to Harker presenting wine um so that happened as well but they again there's lots of moving parts during this period lots of different people kind of conquering Egypt um and during the third intermediate period and then the sort of late period which is Dynasty 26 is what egyptologists call it um animal mummies really begin to appear in full force and animal Cults which we'll talk about and kind of what how is that related to food and things like that um so again the late period was Egyptians and also libyans and Persians also kind of sort of ruling all at the same time um kind of a very Dynamic period for sure um but art and creation is all remains really like fabulous um and the ptolemaic period is really sort of the when Alexander the Great comes in in 332 and takes over Egypt um and he puts the Ptolemy family in charge um and they are they rule Egypt for about the next 300 years um Cleopatra the seventh is the name of poly familiar to everyone she was the last ruler of the Ptolemy Dynasty the last sort of king of Egypt um and so this is a period where there's a great influx of Greek settlers coming in they brought in even more wine and Vineyard influence for sure um and also different kinds of wheat uh and things like that and so you know different sort of influences olive oil too becomes much more of a thing during this period um and finally uh and 30 BCE uh Augustus Octavian he takes over Egypt um and so the Romans rule uh for for quite a while and they continue many of the Egyptian Traditions but eventually Christianity takes over um much like it does and throughout the Roman Empire um and so that's sort of what that 394 date comes from is when sort of Christianity really takes over um from the you know traditional religious Egyptian beliefs um this is a period we have you know a bit of a cookbook preserved so we're actually getting some recipes um pork is a very popular meat um again Vineyards are really um an important thing although a lot of wine is also imported from from roads and other places within the Mediterranean um which you know we can get into more but um but yeah so the the Romans the Romans are ruling um and eventually it becomes sort of what we call the Coptic period the Coptic church is a sort of a separate church that exists in Egypt still exists today um and they a lot of the wine making actually kind of shifts to monasteries for church wine during this period in Christianity spreads and takes over Egypt and also sort of Byzantine Egypt is sort of another aspect that it evolves into um but yeah the Coptic Church still speaks a form of Egyptian today um kind of much like Latin in the Catholic Church it sort of isn't really spoken but but red but it is the last form of the ancient Egyptian language so um everyone learning Egyptian today will also learns Coptic um to sort of be able to understand the evolution of the language so um the the Coptic language is very very interesting in that way um but yeah So eventually uh 646 or deal Islamic conquest kind of finally takes over Egypt um it was like a drawn out period but that's sort of the the sort of end date that is is given by historians um and so it's sort of kind of where we are today we're not really going to move further into the present in this context but um I just put a little picture of some modern Egyptian foods maybe they'll look familiar to some of you um but again yeah so that's sort of where we we end up but we're thinking about sort of the end of ancient Egypt in terms of the end of the Roman period because that's sort of when or at least 343 340 um because that's when we start losing aspects of Egyptian religion and things like that um and we have to you know have a cut off somewhere um but that's like very brief history in which if anyone has any questions or want me to discuss further about certain time periods I just kind of wanted to give you all some visuals and some dates um I know for some of you these names might have been very familiar others not so much um totally understand um but in terms of food I just also remember the things you know yes Egypt just thought it's a very stagnant Place ancient Egypt but things were changing and it was Dynamic um and nothing was exactly the same all the time uh through obviously 3 000 years so kind of also wanting to just have that kind of come you know drive that point home a little bit in terms of of the diversity that also exists within this sort of continuity um so now that we've I've sort of said that we're going to kind of talk just generally um about some things that the ancient Egyptians ate um so yeah this is a very lovely and unique um sketch of an armana princess this was a daughter of akhnaten um eating a duck and so oftentimes we don't see Egyptians in you know formal tomb art and things like that eating um so this is kind of unique in that way but we do see plenty plenty of food um as we will as we will discuss but I just wanted to you know show you an example of you know some of the evidence we have of things people hate you know like a little cornish hen but yeah it's a it's a roasted duck um so in terms of again we'll go back to the Staples wheat wheat is what drove Egypt it really was what gave it its stability and its power in a lot of ways um emmer and barley were the two the two main Wheats um they they were sewed After the flood receded in late summer for us late summer um in the northern hemisphere um but uh winter they would harvest the Grain and again June and July the flood would flood would arrive um so again Staples were bread and beer which were made from emmer and barley wheat Emma pretended to be seems it seems at least from the evidence a bit more popular in later periods but you know this food studies are also is relatively new so these things can could you know fluctuate for sure um other things like lentils peas chickpeas and fava beans were all part of the sort of main Egyptian diet in various forms as well um today if you go to Egypt you're definitely going to see rice and potatoes and things like that but they they were not part of the main diet so you know something something to keep in mind for sure um in terms of of what they had um for like a main diet um and here's just a nice scene of some agricultural um individuals working uh to prepare sort of the wheat and things like that um so we also have a lot of vegetables and fruit um garlic onions cucumber lettuce leeks watermelon and melons figs dates grapes pomegranate juniper berries Persia fruit all of these things um were were very popular today here's an example of a date tree that I took last June um very much you know still in the riping season but things that were very much part of the staple and used in various ways um and again throughout the course if you have any specific questions of like did they eat this or did they eat that let me know I have you know I can happy to answer those questions um I do think it's we live in such a global world now that thinking about what you have access to is a whole a whole nother ball game you know and tomatoes today are such a big part of Egyptian Cuisine like in many places but it is a new world fruit if you will so um that kind of stuff really is exciting so just ask me if that's a great question if anyone has any questions about things like that um but yeah what other things they um domesticated animals or just you know meat products is probably a better way of putting that so cattle was a huge part of Egyptian and you know just East African um uh economy and diet in general um so pastoral pastoralism was working in congruency in you know in partnership with um agriculture for sure um slima ikram who's a specialist particularly in meat and things in ancient Egypt um pretty you know famous idiotological name she has said that killing one cow could feed up to 400 people so you know he you weren't eating meat every day particularly if you were a certain class but you might get to partake in something if there was a feast or a festival or something like that but again Elites or pharaohs or kings and queens they might you know get to eat you not share it with 400 people um but yeah again these you know the the amount of work that would go into these animals was very much important and intentional um but also you know they had sheep and goats pigs uh foul hedgehogs um even which I think is still kind of debated if they actually ate them but you know here you see we have tomb scenes of them being brought as offerings so um here's the boar here's some some foul so lots of lots of meat but you know very much um part of that there's also milk and cheese um again fermentation would have been a big part of it you wouldn't really drink milk obviously without Refrigeration unless you immediately drink it so everything would have been fermented um processed into sort of a yogurt or kind of a cheese something like that um so here's an image of a woman selling something we don't have text to identify it but it looks like it could be sort of gay or some type of cheese or something it was definitely fermented animal products um that were part of the diet for sure um fish and shellfish were especially fish were a big part of um what the Egyptians ate every day from um tilapia and things like that um in the Nile but also the Red Sea um we have evidence of shells from the Red Sea you know how much of that they they ate is hard to say but they you know we especially if you were going to go on a mission from the Red Sea out on the sea you were probably eating some type of shellfish so again um lots of fish which they still eat a lot of in Egypt today um and then things like oils spices wine honey um most common oil in ancient Egypt was probably pressed from different kinds of seeds maybe sesame seeds and radish seeds um think about things like we have listed here like coriander Dill cumin and these ancient words we have um um so many of these ancient plants are really hard to identify in texts and to know exactly what they are um it's definitely you gotta take everything with the grain of salt um for sure um they did have salt as well um but yeah knowing exactly sort of what something might be in a text versus like what you will find in the archaeological record um and then putting the two together could be very tricky so it's always good to think about that um obviously wine there's wine making and wine being imported um as well and honey um was a big was a big thing it was used as a sweetener it's an additive um they loved honey they love the Anisha World in general um it was like the ancient sweetener uh but yeah obviously you know an intensive thing to to sort of cultivate um but again how do we know what they ate and drink um what are the types of evidence we have um so we have textual evidence obviously um written records about what they had we have artistic evidence we have archaeological evidence Pottery baskets Remains the archaeobotanical remains that we have which are so fantastic um and we have ethnographic and ethno-archeology which we will talk about and we have you know experimental which I don't know if it's evident so much as sort of understanding um but we'll kind of I'm going to dive into each of these um briefly to just kind of give us some some understanding um one thing I want to say before is that um we have sort of again I kind of talked about this earlier funerary versus settlement evidence and then again something new Elite versus non-elite um so many of the things preserved from ancient Egypt come from tombs and the tombs are in the desert and they're more accessible and preserve better um so just keep in mind that things were created often for a specific context in a specific time um and being in a funerary context so um that's something that happens a lot but again I put this this map of the town of lahoon um that is a Middle Kingdom town that was has been excavated so we do have some examples of settlements and we will look at that too but a lot of things that you see are going to be from funeral context so just keep that in mind so that will obviously create a bias um we'll also be seeing a lot of things belonging to Elites and Kings part of that is just what's preserved but also what people who excavated in earlier times in the turn of the century saved um archeology has changed a lot over the past 200 years or so um and but again food is a great way of trying to understand sort of how people of different classes and genders and identities lived and there's really various ways to explore that so always good to just keep that in mind um but always be wary of the evidence and the things I show you it's best to have you know multiple forms and realize it's never the whole picture um but she will never have the whole picture but we'll try um so just now we'll get a little bit into the nitty-gritty of of them so textual evidence um which has been something that people focused on for a long time but we're kind of working on sort of having text and image work together these days um at least Within egyptology uh so we have what we call offering lists which are list of food and drink oils cloth Etc that were put in tombs and also in temples for the deceased and for deity so these sort of divine lists of of things that you would need or want um here's some lists of wine from the from the temple uh from the pyramids excuse me of Teddy the first who is a king of um in Dynasty six um we also have things like receipts and these would include wages and grain prices and taxes and crop yields and measurements and sales and everything so I can learn a lot about the economics and the sort of practical aspects of food as payment and things like that through through receipts and other administrative texts in general um and then we kind of have literature as a general word um which can include sort of we might call poetry or which would probably like songs or chants um stories didactic literatures of teaching literature religious texts all sorts of things um so yeah I mean here's a this is from the national league and this is one side of a giant what we call ostracon which is a piece of rock or pottery that has script written on it that has the tale of cineway which is a very famous Egyptian story um where he talks about sort of going to to he's sort of fleeing some sort of a political thing that's happening in Egypt and goes up to what he calls ya which is sort of in the modern day sort of Levant area and talks about how there's wine and all of these sweet things that he's eating um and meanwhile the sort of later didactic text Papyrus and singers saying you know don't eat too much and don't drink too much um so we kind of have these different ways of approaching food enjoying sort of depending on the time or the text which is again something to to keep in mind but also gives us into sight into how Egyptians thought about other cultures food and and vice versa um but yeah we also have artistic tomb scenes um which is a big part of what people have tended to look at um in terms of understanding production and availability and things like that but again remember these are Elite tombs very specific members of society would have their tombs decorated and and and all of these things but we have you know this is a bread and beer making scene from the tomb of tea we have you know knocked and his wife watching winemaking and and fish and fishing and fouling fouling um which you know were they actually people call these daily life scenes but were they actually doing these things it's questionable they're kind of interpretated more as religious scenes and and whatnot um and and again banquet scenes of um receiving food and drink to sort of either you're in ancestor sort of interacting with the deceased again or you're there um uh as a as a as a current family member giving offerings for your deceased family member so I love these artistic tune scenes give us a lot of insight into sort of the wine and the beer and the fruits and the vegetables and all the things that were important but these are again our specific context so we'll we'll break these down a bit more um and then again like I was saying limitations so this is um a beautiful scene from the tomb of sinejim but we have so nedram who's an artist who probably decorated the king's tombs of the Valley of the Kings with his wife plowing and all of these things which this is not actually they would not have done this this is actually a reflection of the Book of the Dead which is a religious text sort of and they're doing these things as part of sort of these these spells and and whatnot within that context so again always kind of take things with many layers to kind of think about sort of how but we get beautiful images of plowing and and all of these different parts of the Agricultural process so it's kind of take what you can but understanding within certain contexts um and then CLA which often in tombs which are just again oftentimes listing um offerings of food and drink um and whatnot and sort of what's important to the deceased and image of the deceased and the list of the their name their name and then a list of the food and offerings were all very important for them to have within their their tomb context for sure um yeah and then this is I just wanted to show you a picture of what that line drawing looks like today so you can kind of get an idea of sort of how how these sort of style with niches look like um at the car museum and temples which were sort of the homes of gods basically um where you would go or you know at least be aware of that these sort of gods would would dwell were very important as well in terms of evidence for food and drink that at least the gods wanted So Divine Divine things from sort of wine and sacred trees and plants and things like that um some of you might be familiar with these sort of wooden models um that are pretty popular and they would go into tombs sort of much like um shop tees kind of do the the bidding of the of the deceased and help them with sort of continuing to have bread and beer and all the things um here's an example of some individuals making bread and beer from jabaline it's in the it's at Hopkins right now it's a personal attachments to these little little figures but there there's a fire back here and he's here is going to be making um sort of the the dough for the bread and the beer um so yeah anytime you see these figures they're you know Ladle Kingdom through the through the Middle Kingdom that they were part of um the the tombs of kings of excuse me of Elites um for sure but gives us some insight into certain aspects of food and and drink production for sure so moving on to archaeological remains which you know art and Archeology can kind of be overlapping in a lot of ways so just again something fluid when you're dealing with something like ancient Egypt and Asian cultures um we have pottery and baskets um here some examples of wine and for a bread molds baskets that would hold certain things we'll have storage vessels everything from wine vessels to beer vessels to this is a portable grain silo that dates to the first dynasty which is so cool it would just you know take and store grain in that and still preserved so some really amazing sort of aspects of of things that we have um we have drinking and eating vessels and services um you know from wine drinking to beer again and you know baskets and um bowls that have preserved fruits and things from tombs so you know just getting more specific in the ways we think about these vessels and whatnot that that would hold the food and drink which in some ways for studying food and drink or just as important as remains themselves um we have preserved meals which is amazing thank you Egypt and it's deserts um from the world's arguably oldest cheese which I think is like a goat cheese um has was found in a tomb and Sakara uh recently you know here's a bowl of figs they had bread and this is the shape of a possibly a goat but in all sorts of amazing shapes and and um things like that that um you know sometimes mummified meat is are in your tombs I believe there was like a whole four leg of a of a cow and King Tut's tomb so all sorts of stuff um that we have also archaeobotanical remains in general um so sometimes in a site if you're Excavating you can sort of sieve and get charred remains of seeds and um Ember and wheat and really that is what's going to tell us we have amazing archaeobotanists who can identify these things and tell us like wow here we have some lentils like wow so we we know we have these things and that they ate them um so that's a you know getting to be much more of a thing and which is very exciting because there's so much so much to learn from that um and then we also have production centers in Egypt which is pretty cool so beer Vats ovens um we have one wine press which is would have looked something like this um image here this is actually in Lebanon but I wanted to just the give you a sense of what the one in Egypt probably looked like and many might have looked like um in terms of sort of stomping in the wine group grapes where the juice would come down um as well so very cool um but I'm going to switch now to ethno archeology um very quickly so what does that um it's the scientific description of the customs and in of individual peoples and cultures um and ethno Archeology is a branch of archeology that studies the the practices and material means of living human groups in order to gain a better understanding of the evidence left behind by human groups in the past these groups are often presumed to have lived in similar ways so um this is honestly in terms of food and drink a very um very interesting and important way of kind of understanding especially in the modern world the way like our Western modern world I mean um how we how these things are made like Pottery for example understanding exactly how these processes are um and in terms of food and drink you know here's a woman in Sudan making a very specific type of sorghum beer um and sort of understanding that process which you know just seeing an image or the having the Botanical means we're not going to know the steps that they take but sort of observing people who do these things and have been these practices have been passed down over time and generations you can get an idea of what it what it could have been who's the woman in Egypt making um making bread um out in the siwa Oasis they make this um aragi which is this kind of moonshine but like date uh fermented date alcohol as well which is probably pretty similar to things that they had made there for thousands of years and or drank so just these are ways to also kind of better understand by observing um these processes uh that that still exist today an experimental archeology is a kind of another uh good way to get into things from sort of again trying to then recreate your own pottery your processes in terms of that or these cases there's some women at the British museum who tried to make Egyptian beer as close as possible so um all of these things are ways in which you kind of can get get at understanding a little bit better um for sure and what we're hoping to do in this class which maybe you've already tried some recipes is sort of experimental archeology so I mean first I just had you try watermelon and cucumber which we know are two things that they ate in ancient Egypt and we have you know both tomb scenes and archaeobotanical remains of of these two um delicious treats um so I hope you know with summer and everything you can kind of have some slices of both of them and think about you know the ways in which the Egyptians might have eaten them would they have just you know cut up a cucumber the way we did or maybe they ate it in other ways you don't know I don't know um but they definitely were included as you can see in these images in tombs as like full full um uh vegetables and things like that so um we do yeah we have both art and um arche Botanical evidence of both of these and I hope I hope you're able to try some type of of bread um you know from a sourdough starter to to one of the others that I that I included in the recipes I tried to make the aish badali bread which you know I didn't have the perfect oven but it worked out pretty well um so so yeah you haven't gotten to it I hope you'll you'll give it a chance but you know starting to do your own experimental archeology and thinking about how that process might be helpful in terms of understanding exactly how things were made um and what ingredients they had which is kind of what we're going to talk about next week which is going to be a lot of the sort of processes in terms of how did they make bread how did they make beer how did they make wine um and how do they make honey all of those sort of things and thinking about recipes and processes and all of that stuff so yeah thank you so much um for for a little over time but for for listening and um please again email me any questions you might have Morgan Elizabeth M gmail.com or post in any of the discussion boards that um from the Google Doc to the YouTube um so yeah very excited um for this class and you know thank you again for listening and yeah have a great have a great week I'll see you on Friday foreign [Music] foreign