Food in Ancient Egypt: Fruit, Vegetables, Spices, Eating Customs | Middle East And North Africa

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ANCIENT EGYPTIAN FOOD

Bakery and brewery
The Egyptians ate a low-fat, high-fiber diet with a lot of grains. They ate a variety of plant oils and fats, bread, milk, lentils, cottage cheese, cakes, onions, meat, dates, melons, milk products, figs, ostrich eggs, almonds, peas, beans, olives, pomegranates, grapes, vegetables, honey, garlic and other foods. The Egyptians ate a variety of grains, including barely and emmer-wheat. The Egyptians cultivated barley, emmer wheat, beans, chickpeas, flax, and other types of vegetables. Barley was used for making beer. Emmer wheat was used to make bead. Lentils were discovered in an Egyptian tomb dating back to 2000 B.C.).

John Baines of the University of Oxford wrote: “The principal crops were cereals, emmer wheat for bread, and barley for beer. These diet staples were easily stored...Papyrus, a swamp plant, may have been cultivated or gathered wild. Papyrus roots could be eaten, while the stems were used for making anything from boats and mats to the characteristic Egyptian writing material; this too was exported. A range of fruit and vegetables was cultivated. Meat from livestock was a minor part of the diet, but birds were hunted in the marshes and the Nile produced a great deal of fish, which was the main animal protein for most people. [Source: John Baines, BBC, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford, February 17, 2011 |::|]

According to Minnesota State University, Mankato: “Agricultural crops were not the mainstay of the ancient Egyptian diet. Rather, the Nile supplied a constant influx of fish which were cultivated year around. In addition to fish, water fowl and cattle were also kept by the Egyptians. Flocks of geese were raised from the earliest times and supplied eggs, meat and fat. However, the domestic fowl didn't make its appearance until Ramesside times, and then in only very isolated places. The Egyptian farmers, in their early experimental phase, also tried to domesticate other animals such as hyenas, gazelles and cranes but gave up after the Old Kingdom. Cattle were also part of the staple diet of the Egyptians, suggesting that grazing land was available for the Egyptians during the times when the Nile receded. However, during the inundation, cattle were brought to the higher levels of the flood plain area and were often fed the grains harvested from the previous year.” [Source: Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com +]

Tombs with mummies were often packed with food such as snails for the afterlife. Rice arrived in Egypt in the 4th century B.C. and around that time India was exporting it to Greece.The 4,900-year-old tomb of King Aha had three chambers and was stocked with oxen meat, waterbirds, cheese, dried figs, bread and many vessels of beer and wine for the afterlife journey. A small box found in tomb of King Tut contained 25 varieties of barely, each in its own compartment.

Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Herodotus on Ancient Egyptian Foods

Fifth Century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus wrote in Book 2 of “Histories”: “The Egyptians are the healthiest of all men, next to the Libyans; the explanation of which, in my opinion, is that the climate in all seasons is the same: for change is the great cause of men's falling sick, more especially changes of seasons. They eat bread, making loaves which they call “cyllestis,”37 of coarse grain. For wine, they use a drink made from barley, for they have no vines in their country. They eat fish either raw and sun-dried, or preserved with brine. Quails and ducks and small birds are salted and eaten raw; all other kinds of birds, as well as fish (except those that the Egyptians consider sacred) are eaten roasted or boiled.” [Source: Herodotus, “The Histories”, Egypt after the Persian Invasion, Book 2, English translation by A.D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920, Tufts]

Some "Egyptians have live together with beasts: other men live on wheat and on barley, but to any one of the Egyptians who makes his living on these it is a great reproach; they make their bread of grain, which some call spelt: they knead dough with their feet and clay with their hands, with which also they gather up dung: and whereas other men, except such as have learnt otherwise from the Egyptians, have their members as nature made them.

Priests enjoy also good things not a few, for they do not consume or spend anything of their own substance, but there is sacred bread baked for them and they have each great quantity of flesh of oxen and geese coming in to them each day, and also wine of grapes is given to them...beans moreover the Egyptians do not at all sow in their land, and those which they grow they neither eat raw nor boil for food; nay the priests do not endure even to look upon them, thinking this to be an unclean kind of pulse: and there is not one priest only for each of the gods but many, and of them one is chief-priest, and whenever a priest dies his son is appointed to his place.

Variety of Ancient Egyptian Foods

Ancient Egyptians prayed that they might have nourishment in heaven bread and beer, goose and beef; but a glance at the lists of offerings in the tombs shows us that they knew very well that all bread and all meat was not the same thing. These curious lists claim for the deceased not less than ten sorts of different meat, five kinds of birds, sixteen kinds of bread and cake, six kinds of wine, and four of beer, and eleven varieties of fruit, as well as “all manner of sweet things," etc. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Ancient Egyptian dishes were not necessarily passed down from one generation to another, rather they were like our dishes, subject to fashion. We have the idea of the meal which was to be prepared for a king of the 19th dynasty in the various towns he passed through on his journey with the court; and in the list of ten varieties of bread and five sorts of cake there is scarcely one which was in common use under the Old Kingdom. They had foreign dishes as well as those of home manufacture. In a very ancient sacred book we read that the gods eat the fine bread of Oamh, i. e. the nsp of the Semites. The names also of a good many of the dishes of the New Kingdom show them to be importations.

It was from the neighbouring northern countries, particularly Syria, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia, that the Egyptians procured culinary delicacies. For the “princes “there were the “great well-baked loaves “made from the corn of T'uret, and for the soldiers various kinds of Syrian bread from Oamh," as the Keleshet bread, and especially the Arupusa. They obtained good wine from Charu; beer from Qede; fine oil from 'Ersa, Cheta, Sangar, 'Emur, T'echesa, and Naharena; the best figs came from Charu. “These articles of food were however not always really imported.

Candy, Oil and Ice in Ancient Egypt

“One of the most prized products of the Nile and of Egyptian agriculture was oil. Oil was customarily used as a payment to workmen employed by the state, and depending on the type, was highly prized. The most common oil (kiki) was obtained from the castor oil plant. Sesame oil from the New Kingdom was also cultivated and was highly prized during the later Hellenistic Period.”

References to candy date back to 2000 B.C. Images in tombs from the 11th dynasty depict confectionery processing taking place in temples. The treats were offered to the gods or reserved for noblemen. Around 1000 B.C., Egyptians produced hard candies made from honey, herbs, spices and citrus fruit (sugar wouldn't be available for another 2,500 years). A cake made with sesame, honey and probably milk was found in the 4,200-year-old grave of Pepionkh. It is the oldest known piece of cake.

In ancient India and Egypt ice was sometimes derived from water set in the ground that froze due to cooling evaporation. As early as 3000 B.C., Egyptians were able to make ice in the desert by taking advantage of a natural phenomena that occurs in dry climates. Water left out at night in shallow clay trays on a bed of straw would freeze as a result of evaporation into the dry air and sudden temperatures drops even though the temperature was well above freezing.

The were reports of cannibalism in ancient China, India and Egypt associated with exotic dishes enjoyed by the aristocracy and people surviving during famines.

Food of the Pyramid Builders

Dr Joyce Tyldesley, University of Manchester: “The animal bones recovered from this area and from the pyramid town include duck, the occasional sheep and pig and, most unexpectedly, choice cuts of prime beef. The ducks, sheep and pigs could have been raised amidst the houses and workshops of the pyramid town but cattle, an expensive luxury, must have been grazed on pasture-probably the fertile pyramid estates in the Delta-and then transported live for butchery at Giza.” [Source: Dr Joyce Tyldesley, University of Manchester, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

Alexander Stille wrote in Smithsonian Magazine: “Judging by remains at the site, they were eating a great deal of beef...Beef cattle were mostly raised in rural estates and then perhaps taken by boat to the royal settlements at Memphis and Giza, where they were slaughtered. Pigs, by contrast, tended to be eaten by the people who produced the food. Archaeologists study the “cattle to pig” ratio as an indication of the extent to which workers were supplied by the central authority or by their own devices—and the higher the ratio, the more elite the occupants. [Source: Alexander Stille, Smithsonian Magazine, October 2015 |=|]

“At Lehner’s “Lost City of the Pyramids” (as he sometimes calls it), “the ratio of cattle to pig for the entire site stands at 6:1, and for certain areas 16:1,” he writes of those well-stocked areas. Other, rather exotic items such as leopard’s teeth (perhaps from a priest’s robe), hippopotamus bones (carved by craftsmen) and olive branches (evidence of trade with the Levant) have also turned up in some of the same places, suggesting that the people who populated Lehner’s working village were prized specialists.” |=|

Ancient Egyptian Bread

Bread was the staple of the ancient Egyptian diet, and most of it was made with barley or emmer wheat, a twin-kerneled form of grain that is very difficult to husk. Hieroglyphics have recorded 14 types of bread, including sourdough and whole wheat breads. Scholars speculate that families usually ate unleavened pita-style bread at home and ate pot-baked breads during temple festivals and special occasions. [Source: David Roberts, National Geographic, January 1995]

The ancient Egyptians grinded up grain on granite grind stones. Among the objects unearthed at Umm Mawagir (“mother of bread molds,” in Arabic) — a settlement that flourished in Egypt’s western desert more than 3,500 years ago — was a double bread mold, one of a half-ton of bakery artifacts. The study of ancient bread has been made possible because it was the practice of ancient Egyptians to leave food and beer in their tombs for sustenance in the afterlife and the arid climate preserved those remains.

In a report published in the journal Science in 1996, Dr. Delwen Samuel, a research associate in archeology at Cambridge, described his examination with optical and electron microscopes of nearly 70 loaves of bread found among the ruins of workers' villages. Almost all of the bread was made from a type of wheat known as emmer, sometimes flavored with coriander and fig.

Vegetables in Ancient Egypt

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carrying bread and other things
Vegetables were eaten as a complement to the widely-eaten beer and bread; the most common were long-shooted green scallions and garlic but both also had medical uses. There was also lettuce, celery (eaten raw or used to flavor stews), certain types of cucumber and, perhaps, some types of Old World gourds. By Greco-Roman times there were turnips, but it is not certain if they were available before that period. Various tubers of sedges, including papyrus were eaten raw, boiled, roasted or ground into flour and were rich in nutrients. [Source Wikipedia]

Onions originated in Egypt. Egyptians believed that onions symbolized the many-layered universe. They swore oaths on onions like a modern-time Bible.

Purple peas were found in the tomb of King Tut. Cucumbers were known in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. They originated in the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India, where they have been cultivated for more than 3,000 years.

Radishes were cultivated by the ancient Egyptians at least 4,000 years ago. They were eaten with onions, and garlic by workers. Egyptians believed that radishes were aphrodisiacs. Leeks were also eaten in ancient Egypt.

Fruits in Ancient Egypt

The most common fruit were dates. There were also figs, grapes (and raisins), dom palm nuts (eaten raw or steeped to make juice), certain species of Mimusops, and nabk berries (jujube or other members of the genus Ziziphus). Figs were widely eaten and are high in sugar and protein. Unlike vegetables, which were grown year-round, fruit was more seasonal. Pomegranates and grapes would be brought into tombs of the deceased.

Figs, together with grapes, were grown at all periods in ancient Egypt. We meet with the fruit everywhere, and we also find representations of the trees in the old tombs. The fig-trees have thick gnarled trunks, and seem scarcely to reach five meters (16 feet) in height; their boughs however, are strong enough to allow the gardeners to climb up and gather the fruit into flat baskets. When the gardeners are unable to climb up into the trees themselves, they send tame monkeys into the branches to gather the fruit for them, as we see in the illustration below. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Melons are one the earliest crops along with wheat, barley, various legumes, grapes, dates, pistachios and almonds. Melons are native to Iran, Turkey and the western Asia. They are depicted in an Egyptian tomb painting from 2400 B.C., Greek documents from the 3rd century B.C. mention them. They were described by Pliny the Elder in the 1st century A.D.

Archaeology magazine reported: The wild African watermelon has white flesh and is largely inedible due to its bitterness. However, wall paintings from ancient Egyptian tombs depict what appear to be watermelons, which has led experts to speculate that the fruit may have been domesticated in a manner that made it more palatable. Now, DNA sequencing from a watermelon leaf found in a 3,500-year-old tomb in Luxor has shown that two of the melon’s genes were manipulated, causing it to develop red flesh and a sweet taste. This confirms that New Kingdom Egyptians did indeed cultivate watermelons similar to the ones we enjoy today. Archaeology magazine, September-October 2019]

In August 2021, scientists led by the French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio announced that they had discovered 2,400-year-old baskets of fruit in under the sea from the ancient Egyptian city of Thonis-Heracleion. The trove of artifacts from the site included wicker baskets filled with doum, fruit from an African palm tree, grape seeds, and Greek ceramics. Goddio told the Guardian that the fruit had been untouched for over 2000 years, calling the find "incredible. " [Source: Bethany Dawson, Business Insider, January 2, 2022]

Grape seeds have been found in 3,000-year-old mummies.

Persea Tree and Mimusops Fruit of Ancient Egypt

glass and bronze grapes
According to ancientfoods.wordpress.com: The name Persea stimulates the interest of all persons concerned with avocado in any manner, for it is the botanical designation of the genus in the botanical family Lauraceae which includes the avocado of commerce (Persea americana), the coyo or yas (Persea scheideana), and several other close botanical relatives such as the southern bay (Persea borbonia). The use of the term “Persea” for an entirely different plant belonging to another plant family can cause some confusion and often arouses the curiosity. The “persea” tree of Egypt is a case in point. This plant of North African origin with the botanical designation of Mimusops schimperi belongs to the botanical family Sapotaceae, which includes such fruit bearing plants as Achras zapota, the sapodilla, Calocarpum mammosum, the mamey, and Calocarpum viride, the green sapote of Central America. Mimusops schimperi resembles a pear tree in general in leaf, flower and form, but is evergreen. The fruit is as large as a pear, oblong to almond-shaped, grass green in color, and has a stone like a plum. The flesh is “sweet, luscious and wholesome. ” This persea is “believed to be unique to Egypt and Ethiopia.” [Source Ancientfoods, May 2, 2012]

An interesting account of the Egyptian persea is given by Darby in his discussion of Food: The Gift of Osiris. Various interpretations are described concerning the significance of the “sacred” tree in Egyptian, which often depicted kings protected by its foliage or emerging from it. The high esteem which was afforded this tree is indicated by a law passed under Emperor Arcadius forbidding the uprooting or sale of any persea tree in Egypt.

The association of the name Persea is derived from the Greek mythological hero Perseus and suggests that the tree may have been in Egypt since some very early period. Perseus, of Greek legend, was the son of Danea and Zeus. Among many exploitations and experiences he stole an eye and a tooth which was shared by three hags. Finally he acquired the helmet of Hades which rendered him invisible. This allowed him to approach the Gorgon Medusa as she slept, whence he cut off Medusa’s head, gave it to Athena, and then fled to Ethiopia. There he delivered Andromeda from a sea serpent and later married her. Such is an abbreviated account of the great mythological Greek god. The name Perseus was also applied early in astronomical literature as it refers to a northern constellation between Taurus and Cassiopeia.

Specimens of the Egyptian persea Mimusops have been found in tombs at Illahoun (twelfth dynasty) and in wreaths around the mummy of Rameses II at Saqqara (third dynasty), and in the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amon. Persea was a name associated with the ancient Egyptian tree long before it was employed as the genus for the avocado. It is an old Greek name used by Theophrastus as the common name of Mimusops ca 320 B.C. Persea as the genus for the avocado of the New World was made by Miller in 1754.

Dates, Spices and Olives in Ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans all consumed olives and olive oil. Olives were first cultivated in Palestine around 4000 B.C. and spread to Syria and Turkey and reached the ancient Egypt around 1500 B.C. (the Egyptian were using olive purchased from Palestine long before that). In ancient times, olive oil was used in everything from oil lamps, to religious anointments, to cooking and preparing condiments and medicines. It was in great demand and traveled well and people like the Philistines grew rich trading it.

Dates would either be dried/dehydrated or eaten fresh. Dates were sometimes even used to ferment wine and the poor would use them as sweeteners. According to an old Egyptian saying "A date palm is the only creation of God that resembles man. Unlike other trees, a date palm gives more as it grows older."

Egyptians flavored their food with sea salt, thyme, marjoram and essences of fruit and nuts, particularly almonds. Saffron was known in ancient Egypt. Stigmas have been found in Egyptian mummies and Cleopatra used in her cosmetics. The ancient Egyptians believed that licorice was an aphrodisiac. King Tut ate licorice root before engaging his queen.

Garlic was consumed by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. The Romans regarded it as a food for the lower classes. The pyramid builders ate lot of onions and garlic. One of the first recorded strikes occurred when their garlic ration was reduced. A slave, records show, could be bought for seven kilograms of garlic.

Meat in Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptians ate the meat of cattle, sheep and goats. Lots of bones from slaughtered animals have been found. Hieroglyphics show ancient Egyptians hunting ducks, antelope and a variety of wild animals and using nets to catch birds as well as fish. There are even hieroglyphics describing slaves making foie gras.

The kind of meat that people at was an indicator of their wealth and status. Veal and roast goose were regarded as treats that generally only the upper classes could enjoy. The poor ate goat and muttons if they ate any meat all.

Pigs were eaten for a time but there was a prejudice against pork associated with Seth, god of evil. Pigs are depicted at a New Kingdom (1055-1069 B.C.) temple in El Kab, south of Luxor. As time went on the ancient Egyptians distanced themselves from pigs, regarding them as unclean, and abstained from pork. Herodotus wrote “the pig is regarded among them as an unclean animal so much so that if a man passing accidently touches a pig, he instantly hurries to the river and plunges in with his clothes on.” Herodotus describes swineherds as an inbreed caste forbidden from setting foot in temples.

The Egyptians ate a lot of fish. They ate all the varieties that were found in the Nile and many from the Mediterranean. Archaeologists have found evidence e of fish processing operation, where fish were cleaned, salted and smoked. Fish was also made into sauce.

Meat mummies of an afterlife feast displayed at the Egyptian Museum include ducks, pigeons, legs of beef, roast and an oxtail for soup. They were all dried in natron, wrapped in linen and packed in a picnic basket. “Whether or not you got it regularly in life didn’t matter because you got it for eternity,” one archeologist said.

Eating Customs in Ancient Egypt

The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used towel-like napkins and finger bowls of water scented with things like rose petals, herbs and rosemary. The Egyptians used particular scents — orange blossom, myrrh, almond, cassia — for different courses.

Under the Old Kingdom the Egyptians squatted for their meals," two people generally at one little table, which was but half a foot high, and on which was heaped up fruit, bread, and roast meat, while the drinking bowls stood underneath. They ate with their hands, and had no compunction in tearing off pieces of goose. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

In later times common people ate in the same way, whilst the upper classes of the New Kingdom preferred to sit on high cushioned chairs and to be waited upon by men servants and female slaves. After eating, water was poured over the hands, corresponding to the modern Oriental custom; in the dining-rooms, therefore, we often find a jug and basin exactly like those of a modern wash-stand.

Banquets in Ancient Egypt

20120216-customs 2.jpg At royal banquets, guests sat on woven mats and drank bowl after bowl of red wine and ate fish, beef, fowl and bread and honey with their fingers. Servant girls washed their hands before they carried in trays of grapes, figs and palm. Beautiful and topless dancers performed to the music of flutes, harps and bone clappers.

Recounting an Old Kingdom tale, Herodotus wrote a pharaoh"had innumerable lamps made, by the light of which he set himself every evening to drink and be merry, and never ceased day or night from the pursuit of pleasure." He had been told earlier that he had only six years to live so "his objective” was "turning night into day to extend the six remaining years of his life into twelve.”

In ancient Egypt table decoration was a fine art. Large lotus flowers were used for the dining tables; and under the New Kingdom the jars of wine and beer were always adorned with covers of embroidered work; ' “wreaths of flowers for the wine-jars “were indispensable, and when the court traveled through a town it was just as necessary that the servants should procure the 100 wreaths as the 29,200 loaves or the 200 bushels of coal. ' In the same way as the tables were decked with flowers, the guests at the banquet were adorned with sweet-smelling flowers and buds; they wore lotus buds in their hair, and held them out to each other to smell, just as the guests amongst other nations pass glasses of wine to each other at the present day. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Food from Ancient Nubia: Dates and Ostrich Eggs

The main food crop of ancient Nubia, according to Ancientfoods and ancientsudan.org, “seems to be sorghum; evidence for this is found in Kushite pottery. Dates are one of the available crops grown along the Nile, especially in Upper Nubia. In the sixth century AD, the Nubians were well known by the Arabs for their good date-wine production. Date-wine is a common traditional drink in Sudan today. [Source: Ancientfoods, ancientsudan.org, May 13, 2011 ***]

“The extensive production of doam (palm fruit) is also evident from the New kingdom Egyptian relieves, as Nubians are often depicted carrying doam as gifts to the Egyptian pharaohs. A realistic description was provided by Strabo in the Roman Geographer Strabo in the second century CE: “The Aethiopians (or the Kushites) live on millet and barley, from which they also make a drink; but instead of olive-oil they have butter and tallow. Neither do they have fruit trees, except a few date-palms in the royal gardens.” (Strabo xvii Ch. 2: 2).6 ***

“In the first century CE, a Roman geographer wrote that the Nubians, “use meats, blood, milk, and cheese”(Strabo xvii Ch. 2: 2) for food. Unlike the Egyptians and beside agriculture, the Nubians heavily domesticate cattle and sheep for their food and other sources. Extensive left over of sheep bones were found at the offering chapels and temple kitchens in Kerma.7 Cattle were also sacrificed in great numbers in the Kerma graves, indicating the importance of their presence in the Nubian life. ***

“One prominent diet was ostrich eggs. An ostrich egg was found in almost every grave at Kerma. Fruits may have included oranges and grape-fruits which are extensively grown in Sudan today. Pigs may have been eaten in limited amounts. .” ***

Tiger Nuts

Joanna Linsley-Poe wrote: “Tiger nuts are the edible tubers (also sometimes called fruits or grains), found at the end of the root system of Cyperus grass (Cyperus esculentus L.). A member of the sedge family, along with its better-known cousin, papyrus, Cyperus Grass grows in marshy areas such as the Delta region (in ancient times) or well irrigated areas. These tiger nuts, called Hab’el aziz in Arabic were a great source of nutrition in Egypt since at least the 5th millennium B.C. According to Tackholm, V. and Drar, M. in Flora of Egypt, vol II, first published in 1950 and again in 1973, it was believed by them to be the most ancient of foods found in Egypt after Emmer and Barley. Illustrations of Cyperus Grass are found in many tombs and it was even discovered in the stomachs of pre-dynastic mummies by F. Netolitzki, in The Ancient Egyptians and their influence on the Civilization of Europe by G. Elloit-Smith. Specimens from many sites in Egypt can be found at the Agricultural Museum of Dokki, in Cairo. [Source: Bu Joanna Linsley-Poe,Ancientfoods.com, March 23, 2012 ~|~]

“There is a great deal of debate among Egyptologists as to the ancient name assigned to this plant. Gywis the name it is normally given however the Ebers papyrus speaks of a medicine it calls “ grains of mnwh also called snw-t” Mnwh is the plural form of mnh, papyrus or sedge, such as Cyperus. Greek scholars, Theophrastus and Pliny associated the name of several different plants with C. esculentus (or tiger nuts). Malinathalle was one of the plants mentioned by Theophrastus as being boiled in barley beer and then eaten as a sweetmeat. This sounds similar to the above recipe except a bit more intoxicating. ~|~

“The Ancient Egyptians also used this plant for medical purposes. They prescribed the plant in mixtures for everything from; mouth chews, enemata, dressings, ointments, to fumigations, designed to sweeten the smells of the house or clothes. In the latter form it was used with myrrh. When you consider that the Ancient Egyptians ate this plant as well as using it in their medicines (as they did with so many of the plants that grew naturally or which were cultivated). They certainly got the full value of all that the Nile had to offer them. ~|~

“According to Darby in Food The Gift of Osiris, C. esculentus continues to be cultivated to this day in Egypt (most likely in the Delta region). Beyond Egypt the Arabs carried it to North Africa, Sicily and Spain. Called Chufa in Spain it is made into a popular drink. In Egypt the tuber is ground and used in breads in addition to producing oil used in ointments and cosmetics. Finally the residue is used as fodder for animals. ~|~

“The tubers are edible, with a slightly sweet, nutty flavour, compared to the more bitter-tasting tuber of the related Cyperus rotundus (purple nutsedge). They are quite hard, and are generally soaked in water before they can be eaten, thus making them much softer and giving them a better texture. They have various uses; in particular, they are used in Spain to make horchata. They are sometimes known by their Spanish name, chufa. ~|~

“Tigernuts have excellent nutritional qualities, with a fat composition similar to olives and a rich mineral content, especially phosphorus and potassium. The oil of the tuber was found to contain 18 percent saturated (palmitic acid and stearic acid) and 82 percent unsaturated (oleic acid and linoleic acid) fatty acids. Today besides human use in drinks and baked goods, Chufa(tiger nuts), are used as fish bate and food for wild turkeys, ducks, deer and hogs-who could imagine. Such an ancient plant it is known in addition to the name tiger nut, as earth chestnut, earth almond, yellow nut grass, ground almond and rush nut. The plant is cultivated today in China, Spain and West Africa and the U.S.” ~|~

Recipe for Tiger Nut Sweets

Bu Joanna Linsley-Poe wrote: “Tiger nut Sweets: Grind a quantity of tiger nuts in a mortar. Sift the flour carefully. To the ground tiger nuts add a bowl of honey and mix to a dough. Transfer the dough to a shallow metal (?) vessel. Place on top of the fire and add a little fat. Boil over a gentle fire until a firm paste is obtained. It must smell roasted not burnt. Cool and shape into tall conical loaves. [Source: Bu Joanna Linsley-Poe, Ancientfoods, March 23, 2012]

According to An Ancient Egyptian Herbal by Lise Manniche, the loaves from the above recipe were made as a special offering instituted by the king for every feast anew (or alike). This recipe was on the tomb walls of Rekhmire, vizier of Pharaoh Thutmose III (Eighteenth Dynasty) from the fifth century B.C. Ms. Manniche’s translation comes from pictures on the tomb walls themselves.

These loaves called Shat were a highly valued temple offering.Egyptian Food and Drink by Hilary Wilson also cites the bakery scene in Rekhmire’s tomb as showing the stages of preparation of triangle loaves, also made with ground tiger nuts and sweetened with dates and honey.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum, The Egyptian Museum in Cairo

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated August 2024