Egyptian Beer for the Living, the Dead ... and the Gods

by: Horst Dornbusch on 02-28-2005

Next time you are in New York City, make it a point to visit the Metropolitan Museum and have a BeerAdvocate moment. In a museum!? Yes, go to the Egyptian section and snoop around the many tombs and mummies and search for the neat stuff retrieved from the tomb of Meketre. This fellow was a high administrator, a sort of chancellor and prime minister of the warrior King Mentuhotep II of the 11th dynasty. Mentuhotep II ruled the land of the Nile for half a century, from roughly 2050 to 2000 B.C. For a depiction of the king's likeness, see this image and this one.

When Meketre died (around 1975 B.C.), he was mummified and put to rest in a tomb in western Thebes, opposite present-day Luxor. Fortunate for us, his contemporaries placed a large collection of miniature carved wooden figures in his tomb. These toy figures represented Egyptians at work. There was a carpentry shop, an abattoir, a granary, a kitchen, a couple of river boats, and ... a brewery. Because the inner chamber of Meketre's tomb was untouched when it was discovered by Herbert E. Winlock on March 17, 1920, the workshop models give us an intimate three-dimensional view of how Egyptians lived.

The Egyptians did not invent beer. Rather they had learned the art of brewing from the world's first known brewers, the Sumerians, Babylonian, and Assyrians further to the East in what is now Iraq. The Egyptians, however, left us with the best documentation of ancient brewing practices. Most of the many depictions of Egyptian brewing that have come down to us are murals in vaults, pyramids, and sacrificial chambers. These attest to the importance and high esteem in which the art of beer-making was held in Egyptian society. Yet the find in Meketre's tomb probably ranks among the best preserved and most instructive.

The brewery model in the Metropolitan Museum apparently dates from around 2009 to 1998 B.C. A card at the exhibition in the Museum explains what is going on in the brewery: "The overseer with a baton sits inside the door. In the brewery two women grind flour, which another man works into dough. After a second man treads the dough into mash in a tall vat, it is put into tall crocks to ferment. After fermentation, it is poured off into round jugs with black clay stoppers." See the Museum's website for more.

In ancient Egypt, beer was a regular part of the daily life of every Egyptian, from the highest to the lowest. It was the coinage of power and social cohesion, connected to both the gods and the state. In Egyptian culture, all power derived from the sun. The falcon-headed god of the sun, Re, was regarded as the source of all life and sustenance. He was also considered the inventor of beer. Re and his wife Nut, the goddess of the stars, were the progenitors of the pharaohs and of all the lesser gods in the beyond. Their favorite daughter was Hathor, a pretty and alluring creature, with whom Re, her father, fell madly in love. Incest was not a taboo in Egypt and it was customary for a pharaoh's children to marry each other. Re called Hathor his "eye," and she used to please him by disrobing in from of him. When Hathor drank beer, she turned into the goddess of love, lust, joy, singing, dancing, and laughter. Together, Re and his daughter Hathor had a son, Ihi, who became the god of music.

Hathor was a friend of the dead whom she accompanied on their journey to the beyond. Her sacred tree was the sycamore under whose shady canopy lovers would meet to share a crock of beer. Her brew was an aphrodisiac, often flavored with mandrake (Mandragora officinarum), a plant with a parsnip-like brown root, whose bark contains an alkaloid that has a narcotic effect.

In Egypt, Beer is a Meal with Heavenly Connections
In Egypt, beer was regarded as food. In fact, the old Egyptian hieroglyph for "meal" was a compound of those for "bread" and "beer". This "bread-beer meal" plus a few onions and some dried fish was the standard diet of the common people along the Nile at the time. Beer came in eight different types in Egypt. Most were made from barley, some from emmer, and many were flavored with ginger or honey. The best beers were brewed to a color as red as human blood. The Egyptians distinguished between the different beers by their alcoholic strength and dominant flavor.

None other than the god of the dead, Osiris, was hailed as the guardian of beer, because to him grain - both emmer and barley - were sacred. The Egyptians believed that grain had sprung spontaneously from Osiris' mummy, as a gift to mankind and as a symbol of life after death. This was sufficient justification for the god-like pharaohs to turn brewing into a state monopoly and strictly license brewing rights to entrepreneurs and priests. Many temples eventually opened their own breweries and pubs, all in the service of the gods. The port of Pelusium at the mouth of the Nile became a large brewing center, and trading in beer became big business.

Beer in Egyptian society beer was the sacrificial drink of choice in the temples of Hathor. During a five-week long feast in her honor, the priestesses and temple maidens gave banquets for the worshippers, during which they performed erotic dances. Each dancer, dressed only in a string around her waist, as unclad as Hathor had shown herself to her father, would move her hips enticingly before the guests. Hollow pearls, filled with pebbles and suspended from the dancer's waist band, would amplify the arousing rhythm of the erotic spectacle. As the alcohol took over, Hathor's beer would put the imbibers in direct contact with the world beyond. It created the link between the heavens and the earth and allowed the temple visitors to partake in the mystery of life and death. Fittingly, the dead, too, were supplied with crocks of beer in their catacombs so that they would not be thirsty on their trip to the realm where Hathor and Osiris were waiting for them ... with a crock of beer, of course.

It was common etiquette for a worshipper to drink until intoxicated. A wealthy Egyptian rarely would leave home without being accompanied by two slaves and a hammock. So if he got too inebriated to walk home after a night in a tavern or at a beer banquet, he could sleep off his delirium in a prone position while being carried home.

Egyptians used beer as a currency to pay slaves, tradesmen, priests, and public officials alike, which means that every Egyptian was entitled to a certain amount of daily beer. This quantity was strictly regulated, even at the highest level. A queen was entitled to 10 loaves of bread and two crocks of beer a day. This allotment must have been of tremendous importance, because it was usually guaranteed to her by her pharaoh-husband as part of her marriage contract. A princess also got 10 loaves, but she had to wash them down with only one crock of free beer a day. An officer of the guard, on the other hand, who might be called upon to defend both the queen and the princess, fared better than either: He got 20 loaves and two crocks. Even the daily ration of the slaves who built the pyramids, as well as the pay of all low-level officials, included two to three loaves of bred and two crocks of brew, and it was not up to the master's whim whether or not a slave got his beer: The nectar of the gods was even a slave's entitlement.

Beer and Taxes
Beer became so popular in ancient Egypt that no ruler dared to put a tax on it ¾ that is, until the middle of the last century B.C., after the pharaohs had long disappeared and Egypt had become a Greek province. Every government in the world nowadays has an alcohol tax ... but it was a voluptuous and ruthless Greek Queen of the Nile, Cleopatra (69-30 B.C.) ¾ member of the Ptolemy clan and seductress of Roman generals ¾ who first came up with the idea.

Alexander the Great had conquered Egypt in 332 B.C. and founded Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile the same year. In 321 B.C., two years after Alexander's death in Babylon, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter, took over Egypt as the Greek governor. Soter, however, was not content with being just a remote administrator of a Greek province. He had more ambitious plans. He soon established his own dynasty in Egypt, as the legal successors to the indigenous pharaohs. In 304 B.C., he made Alexandria his capital, from where the Ptolemy clan was to rule the land of the Nile, not as a Greek colony but in its own right, for almost three centuries, until Egypt fell to the Romans in a melodramatic final act in 30 B.C.

In the meantime, in the wake of Alexander's almost perpetual warfare, Greece was left exhausted and gradually lost its grip over the conquests Alexander had made. Maintaining preeminence in the Mediterranean world gradually became harder for Greece for another reason: Rome was emerging as a serious rival. This meant that the Ptolemy clan, happily ensconced in Alexandria, could not necessarily count on Greek might to keep them in power in Egypt. To ensure the survival of their clan, therefore, the Ptolemy clan became, one can argue, more "Egyptified" than Egypt became Hellenized. In most respects, the Ptolemy clan dropped its Greek ways and adopted the indigenous mores of their new land. The clan even adopted the old pharaoh custom of incestuous progeniture by marrying brothers to sisters.

Brewing in Egypt was still going strong when the Greeks arrived there. The Greeks were no beer drinkers. They favored wine. However, the strength of the Egyptian brew industry as well as the Ptolemy clan's assimilation to Egyptian customs, are probably the key reasons why beer survived the Greek conquest along the Nile. It is true that wine was known and consumed in Egypt, but it was mostly an upper-crust beverage. Beer, on the other hand, remained the people's drink. Its production continued unabated under Greek rule and, by all accounts, the beer must have tasted pretty good. As we learn from the Bibliotheca historica, a 40-volume history of the world, written by the Sicilian (and obviously wine drinking) historian Diodorus Siculus (circa 90-21 B.C.): "They make a drink from barley in Egypt, which is called zytum, and it compares not unfavorably in pleasantness of color and taste to wine."

With the rise of Rome, in the last two centuries B.C., the Greek Ptolemy clan's hold on fertile Egypt and its wealth could not remain unchallenged. The inevitable show-down over Egypt started indirectly, with a few seemingly unrelated events in Rome and Alexandria. It was around 50 B.C., when Rome's most powerful generals, Gaius Julius Caesar and Cneius Pompey, Caesar's son-in-law (married to Caesar's daughter Julia), were locked in a mortal fight for control of the Roman Empire. At the same time, back in Alexandria, the Ptolemean queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, was busy in a struggle of her own for the throne, which was coveted by Ptolemy XIII, her brother and husband (yes, he was both, in old pharaohnic fashion!). Cleopatra had married him after her first husband, Ptolemy XII, also a brother of hers, had accidentally drowned.

In the eventful year of 47 B.C., the Roman and the Egyptian internal power struggles became hopelessly intertwined in a cataclysmic international affair, when Cleopatra obtained Caesar's political help, became his mistress, triumphed over her brother, and moved to Rome ¾ pregnant with Caesar's son, whom she bore in Rome that year and called Caesarion.

A year later, it was Caesar's turn to settle his score with Pompey. He defeated his rival (and daughter's husband) at the Battle of Pharsalus in Thessaly, after which Pompey, improbably, fled to Cleopatra's Alexandria! There, Cleopatra showed her gratitude to her Roman lover for having saved her throne. She made short shrift of Pompey by having him murdered as he stepped ashore. To clean things up, she then had her husband/brother murdered as well. This paved the way for her undisputed rule in Egypt, under Roman protection. It also ensured, so she hoped, that her son Caesarion would some day succeed her to the throne, as Ptolemy XIV.

But the plans of mice and ... queens! By 44 B.C., the seemingly invincible Julius Caesar, ruler of the Roman universe, found himself dead as a doornail from a bad case of assassination by his erstwhile buddy Brutus. Following Caesar's untimely demise, the rivalries in Rome flared up again ¾ this time between Marc Anthony, Caesar's immediate successor, and Octavius, Caesar's grandnephew and designated heir. Cleopatra was now in a genuine quandary: With her Roman lover and protector gone, her own hold on power in the balance, and her son's prospects as future King of the Nile in jeopardy, she needed a new benefactor ¾ but, fatefully, at that moment her luck ran out. She bet her political future, and her body, on the wrong horse.

The impervious Octavius, soon to be called Emperor Augustus, quickly ousted his challenger, Marc Anthony, and firmly took over the reigns in Rome. Marc Anthony, not reading the signs of the time, thought he was not finished yet. Remembering the good services Cleopatra had once rendered unto Caesar, he headed for Egypt and took up residence in Cleopatra's palace in Alexandria. There, although a married man, he soon became Caesar's successor, not in the hall of Roman power as he had hoped, but in the chambers of the queen's passions. He became Cleopatra's new and acknowledged lover and her unacknowledged hope for the continuance of the Ptolemy dynasty. Using her army by land, her navy by sea, and her body by night, our darling Cleo now alternately fought against Rome and made love to its erstwhile commander-in-chief. Satisfying her steamy lust for power and the powerful ¾ after she had given Caesar a son ¾ she now gave Caesar's aspiring successor to the job of ruler of Rome, the adulterous Marc Anthony, a pair of twins.

While she parted her sheets for her desires, she also drained her kingdom of its wealth to finance her wars. When her coffers would yield no more, she resorted to the ultimate insult: She slapped a tax on beer, the people's drink ¾ ostensibly to curb public drunkenness, but in reality to build more naval galleys! Thus, the licentious queen is credited with the dubious achievement of having invented not only the alcohol tax, but also its most perennial and insincere excuse. To beer lovers, her beer tax and not her affairs (of state and passion) are her most enduring legacy. Darling Cleo's invention set a trend that has survived the rise and fall of many a civilization. It has known no national boundaries, no cultural barriers, no limits of time. The beer tax is still with us today, in just about any country of the globe. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!

For the beer-tax crime, however, it seems that fate was quick to mete out just retribution. The now powerful Octavius went after the lusty lovers and decimated their forces in the Battle of Actium, in 30 B.C. For the beer-tax Queen of the Nile and her Roman beau, the jig was finally up. They committed suicide together, and Octavius put Caesarion, Caesar's and Cleopatra's putative, now 17-year old, son to death.

With this convoluted plot, the line of the Ptolemies and of Greek rule over Egypt came to an end. As the might of Rome settled upon its new colony, the fertile flood lands of the Nile were being converted primarily into a granary for the new mother country. The Romans had no taste for beer, so the grain that was once transformed into the brews of the Nile was now transformed into the breads of the Tiber. As a result, quality brewing in the Old World, long the domain of the people of the Middle East, was sent on a path of decline.

Egypt remained under Roman influence until the so-called Arabic conquest, which was completed by 642 A.D., at which point Egypt became an integral part of the Moslem world. Egyptian brewing, or what was left of it, fell victim to the abstemious zeal of this new religion. As the wave of Islam engulfed the Middle East, the Koran became law, and the Koran says that holy warriors shall practice sobriety. Thus, the brewers of the Nile were forced to exit history for good ¾ ousted by war, taxes and temperance. Only a few mute miniature figures, discovered in the tomb of a 4,000-year old corpse and now on display some 4,000 miles from the Nile, speak volumes of these brewers' former greatness.

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Dictionary Translates Ancient Egypt Life

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Ancient Egyptians did not speak to posterity only through hieroglyphs. Those elaborate pictographs were the elite script for recording the lives and triumphs of pharaohs in their tombs and on the monumental stones along the Nile. But almost from the beginning, people in everyday life spoke a different language and wrote a different script, a simpler one that evolved from the earliest hieroglyphs.

These were the words of love and family, the law and commerce, private letters and texts on science, religion and literature. For at least 1,000 years, roughly from 500 B.C. to A.D. 500, both the language and the distinctive cursive script were known as Demotic Egyptian, a name given it by the Greeks to mean the tongue of the demos, or the common people.

Demotic was one of the three scripts inscribed on the Rosetta stone, along with Greek and hieroglyphs, enabling European scholars to decipher the royal language in the early 19th century and thus read the top-down version of a great civilization’s long history.

Now, scholars at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago have completed almost 40 years of research and published online the final entries of a 2,000-page dictionary that more than doubles the thousands of known Demotic words. Egyptologists expect that the dictionary’s definitions and examples of how words were used in ancient texts will expedite translations of Demotic documents, more of which are unpublished than any other stage of early Egyptian writing.

A workshop for specialists in Demotic research was held at the university last month as the dictionary section for the letter S, the last of 25 chapters to be finished, is being posted on the Oriental Institute’s Web site, where the dictionary is available free. Eventually a printed edition will be produced, mainly for research libraries, the university said.

Janet H. Johnson, an Egyptologist at the university’s Oriental Institute who has devoted much of her career to editing the Chicago Demotic Dictionary, called it “an indispensable tool for reconstructing the social, political and cultural life of ancient Egypt during a fascinating period,” when the land was usually dominated by foreigners — first Persians, then Greeks and finally Romans.

“It’s really huge what a dictionary does for understanding an ancient society,” said Gil Stein, director of the institute. “This will lead to mastering texts from the Egyptians themselves, not their rulers, at a time the country was becoming absorbed increasingly into the Greco-Roman world.”

Although Egyptians abandoned Demotic more than 1,500 years ago, taking up Coptic and eventually Arabic, Dr. Johnson said the dictionary showed that the old language was not entirely dead. It lives on in words like “adobe,” which came from “tby,” the Demotic for brick. The term passed into Arabic (with the definite article “al” in front of the noun) and was introduced into Moorish Spain. From there adobe became a fixture in the Spanish language and architecture.

Ebony, the name of the dark wood that was traded down the Nile from Nubia, present-day Sudan, also has Demotic origins. The word for a man from Nubia passed through Demotic by way of Hebrew and Greek as the name Phineas, reminding Dr. Johnson of Phineas Fogg in Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days.” The Demotic word meaning water lily, Susan, reached Europe through the Hebrew bible.

For the Oriental Institute, this is the culmination of a second long-running dictionary project in little more than a year. The final installment of the 21-volume dictionary of the language of ancient Mesopotamia and its Babylonian and Assyrian dialects was completed last year after 90 years of scholarly labor.

The Demotic dictionary, begun in 1975, supplements and updates a more modest glossary of Demotic words published in German in 1954 by Wolja Erichsen, a Danish scholar.

The new Demotic-English work includes new words not in that glossary, as well as new uses of previously known words and more extensive examples of compound words, idiomatic expressions, place names, reference to deities and words borrowed from other languages. Completed chapters have been posted online from time to time in recent years.

“What the Chicago Demotic Dictionary does is what the Oxford English Dictionary does,” said James P. Allen, an Egyptologist at Brown University. “It gives many samples of what words mean and the range and nuances of their meanings.”

Dr. Allen said the Demotic dictionary had already served as a major research source in writing his history of the Egyptian language, to be published next year by Cambridge University Press. “I could not have done what I did without the dictionary,” he said. “Or at least not as well.”

Demotic is a hard script to read, he said, like shorthand to the uninitiated. The words have no vowels, only consonants. The difference between Demotic and early Egyptian in the age of the great pyramids (2613-2494 B.C.) is greater than between the Anglo-Saxon of Beowulf and modern English. But by computer-processed reproductions of the cursive script in photographs and facsimiles, the dictionary shows the way people wrote the language.

The translation effort can have its rewards, including a new understanding of what Dr. Allen called an X-rated Demotic story well known to scholars. The hero in the story goes into a cave to steal a magic book. A mummy there warns it will bring him disaster. Soon he is entranced by a woman who invites him to her house for sex, but she keeps putting off the consummation with endless demands and frustrating conditions.

On the subject of sex, Demotic scholars said the lusty Cleopatra, the last of the pharaohs and presumably the only one fluent in the common speech, probably spoke only Greek in her boudoir. That was the language of the ruling class for several centuries.

Dr. Johnson, who specializes in research on the somewhat more equal role of women in Egyptian society, said Demotic contracts on papyrus scrolls detailed a husband’s acknowledgment of the money his wife brought into the marriage and the promise to provide her with a set amount of food and money for clothing each year of their marriage. Other documents showed that women could own property and had the right to divorce their husbands.

Another Chicago researcher, Brian Muhs, noted that many Demotic documents dealt with taxes, the government often leasing their collection to the highest bidder, who was required to pay the amount of the bid regardless of how much tax was collected. Individuals seemed to keep their tax receipts for years, along with other financial records, sometimes written on pottery shards.

Since the Chicago Demotic Dictionary should lead to the publication of more texts and more new words, Friedhelm Hoffmann, an Egyptologist at the University of Munich, said that may prompt a need for updated editions — something on the order of CDD 2.0.

Web site for the University of Chicago "Egypt Project"(Demotic)

The intend of this BLOG is to spread the knowledge of the Demotic Discovery and all Copyrights are intact no infringement intended

Garments in the Pharaonic world

Garments in the Pharaonic world

Clothing materials

    The Egyptian climate with its hot summers and mild winters favored light clothing made from plant fibers, predominantly linen and in Roman times occasionally cotton, an import from India Wool was used to a lesser extent, and seldom by Egyptians proper.

Small amounts of silk were traded to the eastern Mediterranean possibly as early as the second half of the second millennium BCE and traces of silk have been found in Egyptian tombs.

Animal skins, above all leopard skins, were sometimes worn by priests and by pharaohs in their role as first servants of the god. Such outfits were found in Tutankhamen's tomb and were depicted quite frequently on the walls of tombs. At times kings and queens wore decorative ceremonial clothing adorned with feathers.

Production

The manufacture of clothes was apparently mostly women's work. It was generally done at home, but there were workshops run by noblemen or other men of means.

The most important textile was linen. It was produced from flax, the quality ranging from the finest woven linen, the byssus for royalty, to the coarse cloth peasants wore. People who were buried in mastabas or pyramids would not be satisfied with anything less than the best quality linen, jdm.j, after death as well.

Pepi I had a vision that his ka would ...be taken to this heaven... to the noble ones of the god, to those whom the god loves, who lean on their Dam-sceptres, the guardians of Upper Egypt, who clothe themselves with jdm.jt-linen, who live on figs, who drink of the wine, who anoint themselves with the best oil... and if a person was lucky he would be ...given as a boon of the king: royal linen, a garment, //////////, aAt-linen, fine and good [linen], /////// [without] end

Articles of dress

They wear tunics made of linen with fringes hanging about the legs, called "calasiris", and loose white woolen cloaks over these.

Ornaments used with dresses

Tutankhamen's tomb yielded many pieces of clothing: tunics, shirts, kilts, aprons and sashes, socks, head-dresses, caps, scarves, gauntlets and gloves, some of them with fine linen linings, others with separate index and middle fingers and a hole for the thumb. Underwear in the form of a triangular loincloth was also found.

If royals had a garment for every body part and for any occasion–even though statues and reliefs often show them wearing only a SnD.wt, the so-called kilt, and a crown–most of their subjects had to make do with much less. Clothes were expensive and in the hot Egyptian climate people often wore as little as possible. If we are to believe the depictions, at parties servants and slave girls wore little more than skimpy panties and jewelry though one may assume that the reason for this undress was not a lack of funds. Working women mostly dressed in a short kind of kalasiris. Men doing physical labor wore a loin-cloth, wide galabiyeh - like robes or, if they were working in the water, nothing at all. Children usually ran around nude during the summer months, and wore wraps and cloaks in winter when temperatures might fall below 10°C.

The gods had to be dressed as well. This was the duty of a small number of priests allowed to enter the holiest of holies, where the god's statue was. Nesuhor, commander of the fortress at Elephantine under Apries, took care that the temple of Khnum had all the servants necessary to serve the needs of the god:

I appointed weavers, maidservants and launderers for the august wardrobe of the great god and his divine ennead.

  

Fashion

The clothes were generally made of linen and kept simple: a short loincloth resembling a kilt for men, a dress with straps for women. These basic garments with minor variations accounting for fashion, social status and wealth did not change fundamentally throughout Egypt's history.

Fancy Dress & Ornaments

Very little sewing was done. The cloth was wrapped round the body and held in place by a belt. Its colour was generally whitish, in contrast to the colorful clothes foreigners wore in Egyptian depictions, although dyed cloth was not unknown.

Everyday clothing was mostly undecorated, though pleating was known since the Old Kingdom, when some dresses of upper class Egyptians were pleated horizontally. In the New Kingdom the pleats were often vertical, but pleating could be quite intricate. A Middle Kingdom piece of clothing displays three different types of pleating: one part is pleated with pleats a few centimeters apart, another with very narrow pleats and a third part is chevron-patterned, with horizontal and vertical pleats crossing each other. How the pleating was done is not known, but it is generally supposed to have been very labor intensive.

The length of the kilts varied, being short during the Old Kingdom and reaching the calf in the Middle Kingdom, when it was often supplemented with a sleeveless shirt or a long robe.

Herodotus called the robes worn by both sexes in Egypt kalasiris. Material and cut varied over the centuries, though the cloth of choice was always linen.

The kalasiris women wore might cover one or both shoulders or be worn with shoulder straps. While the top could reach anywhere from below the breast up to the neck, the bottom hem generally touched the calves or even the ankles. Some had short others were sleeveless. The fit might be very tight or quite loose. They were often worn with a belt, which held together the folds of cloth. 

They were sewn from a rectangular piece of cloth twice the desired garment length. An opening for the head was cut at the centre of the cloth, which was then folded in half. The lower parts of the sides were stitched together leaving openings for the arms.

Women's dresses were at times ornamented with beads. They covered the breasts most of the time, though there were periods when fashion left them bare.

Circular capes date back as far as the Old Kingdom. They were generally made of linen and had an opening for the head cut at the centre. They were often dyed, painted or otherwise decorated and covered little more than the shoulders. Shawls were sometimes worn during the New Kingdom.

The ancient Egyptians knew how to use starch. They used it to stick sheets of papyrus together. According to Pliny they made starch by mixing some of the finest wheaten flour with boiling water. They also soaked linen bandages in starch, which became hard and stiff when dried. It would be tempting to assume that they achieved the pleats in their clothes by using starch, but there is no evidence for that.

  

Laundering

They wear linen garments, which they are especially careful to have always fresh washed.

Cleanliness was apparently next to godliness in ancient Egypt. And who was closer to the gods than the pharaohs themselves. Since earliest historic times the titles of "chief washer of the palace" and "washer to the pharaoh" are known, and keeping the royal clothes lily white was the duty of the "chief bleacher."

Men and women wore perfumed cone on the tops of their heads.
The cone was usually made of ox tallow and myrrh and
as time passed melted and released a pleasant scent.

Manually washing clothes was hard work. Soap was unknown to the ancient Egyptians, so lye, made of castor oil and saltpetre or some such substances, or detergents made of soapwort or asphodel were used. The laundry was beaten, rinsed and wrung by pairs of workers. By 1200 BCE there were fireproof boilers in the washhouses, and the hot water lightened the workload. 

Many, above all the poorer people had no access to facilities and had to do their laundry under at times difficult conditions. Washing on the shore of the river or the bank of a canal, which had the advantage of not having to carry a lot of water in heavy earthen pots, but could sometime be dangerous:

The washer man launders at the riverbank in the vicinity of the crocodile. I shall go away, father, from the flowing water, said his son and his daughter, to a more satisfactory profession, one more distinguished than any other profession.

In the eyes of Kheti at least, washing women's clothing was not really work a man should be doing. He says disparagingly of the washer man:

He cleans the clothes of a woman in menstruation.

Mending

Before the advent of industrial production techniques, cheap overseas transportation and a Third World population with little choice but to work for peanuts, clothes made up a considerable part of one's living expenses. Even though the clothes of the Egyptians were lighter than those of Europeans and less critical to survival, they were careful not to ruin them, and when a garment got torn, it was probably the ancient Egyptian housewife who got her favorite needle out of her needle box, a knife and a piece of thread and settled down to mend it. Garments have been found which were mended a number of times and finally recycled and turned into something else.

Headdresses

If depictions are anything to go by, then ordinary Egyptians did not wear any headdress as a rule, similar to African peoples further south. The better off would put on wigs - perhaps just on special occasions. These grew to a remarkable size during the New Kingdom.

The pharaohs are always represented wearing crowns, but whether this is a pictorial convention or whether they did so in every day life cannot be verified.

Footwear

People living around the Mediterranean had little need for elaborate footwear, with exceptions like the Hittites in their Anatolian highlands who wore shoes with turned up toes, though in Egyptian reliefs Hittites are depicted unshod. The Egyptians went barefoot much of the time, but wore sandals on special occasions or when their feet were likely to get hurt. The sandals were tied with two thongs and, if they had a pointed tip this were often turned upwards. They were made of leather or rush woven or stitched together, and often had leather soles and straps.

The cheapest kind of sandals was affordable to all but the very poorest. Ipuwer in his Admonitions used the lack of sandals to describe the destitute that, in the topsy-turvy world of chaos he warned from, attained great wealth: He who could not afford sandals owns riches.

The kings wore at times very elaborately decorated sandals, and sometimes decorative gloves as well, but generally they were depicted barefoot, as were the gods.

Sandals made of gold have been found which cannot have been very comfortable to their wearers if they were worn at all. Among Tutankhamen's equipment there were 93 pieces of footwear. There were sandals made of wood with depictions of enemies on their soles, on which the king would tread with every step and another pair, which was fastened with buttons.

One of the changes in daily life, which occurred during the Middle and New Kingdoms, was the increasing use of sandals, above all where soldiers or travelers’ were concerned. In the story of The Two Brothers Anpu set out on a journey:

Then he took his staff and his sandals, as well as his clothes and his weapons, and he started to journey to the Valley of the Pine.

Sandals seem to have had an importance that mostly escapes us nowadays, symbolizing prosperity and authority. Thutmose III speaks of the countries he conquered, and possibly of the rest of the world as well, as all lands were under my sandals.

Among the oldest images of the dynastic period are depictions of the sandal-bearer of the pharaoh, and for the sixth dynasty official Weni this post was seemingly an important stage in a splendid career, mentioned twice in his autobiography.

Sandals were very closely and beautifully stitched up of rush, and usually soled with leather. A small bundle of rush was wound round by a rush thread, which at every turn pierced through the edge of a previous bundle. Thus these successive bundles were bound together edge to edge, and a flat surface built up. This was edged round in the same way. In basket making exactly the same principle was followed, with great neatness. The rush sandals soled with leather, leather sandals alone, and leather shoes, were all used. The shoes seem to have been just originating at that period; two or three examples are known, but all of them have the leather sandal strap between the toes, and joining to the sides of the heel, to retain the sole on the foot ; the upper leather being stitched on merely as a covering without its being intended to hold the shoe on the foot. These soles are compound, of three or four thicknesses.

Early Middle Kingdom shoes were little more than sandals with straps between the toes and joined to the sides at the heel with the upper leather just covering the foot without being fastened to the foot itself. During the New Kingdom there were times when some Egyptians seem to have taken to occasionally wearing shoes, as in a depiction of Queen Nutmose at Karnak. This may have come about as an influence of the Hittites, with whom they came into contact at this time.

More information about Pharaonic life on:

 http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/index.html

Egyptian Food and Cooking

by Diana Serbe with Elinoar Moore

May I walk every day unceasingly on the banks of my water, may my soul rest on the branches of the trees which I have planted, may I refresh myself in the shadow of my sycamore.

Egyptian tomb inscription, ca. 1400 BCE

At the crossroads of Asia and Africa, the river Nile snakes through parched desert lands. On the fertile banks of the mighty Nile early man grew the foods that nourished the most advanced of ancient civilizations - The Egyptian. The Nile was the lifeblood of the people. It served as a means of transportation and a source of food from fishing, but the river was also crucial to agriculture.

From the fragile remnants of papyrus, the records of a civilization, we can glean some data about early Egyptian food. Written in Coptic, Greek, Demotic Egyptian, one page of papyrus might hold a list of foods put on board a ship - wine, bread, pickled fish, honey, and vinegar.  Another might contain a written record of a lawsuit, written in the name of a honey-seller. We are on our way to discovery, but it is the sealed tombs of the dead that will reveal most.

Tombs and Pyramids

The Egyptian attitude to the afterlife is unique in that they view the deceased as beginning a journey outward. In their tombs, devoted to aid the departed on his journey, we are able to reconstruct aspects of daily life and the food of Egypt. Mummification preserved the deceased, and as long as the mummy existed, it was given its portion of furniture, statues, paintings and food for its 'eternal home.' Pottery vessels were used for food offerings which were sealed into the tombs, preserving the foods. The tombs were filled with hieroglyphics and with drawings that often represent agricultural practices, butchering methods, any aspect of daily life.

Add to these sources the chronicles of the Greek Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 B.C. - 418 B.C.) whose work on natural history amplifies other sources. Herodotus tells us : "Quails, ducks and smaller birds are salted and eaten uncooked; all other kinds of birds, as well as fish, excepting those that are sacred to the Egyptians, are eaten roasted or boiled." Later he says,"the pig is accounted by the Egyptians an abominable animal; and first, if any of them in passing by touch a pig, he goes into the river and dips himself forthwith in the water together with his garments."

We know that barley and emmer, a type of wheat, grew extensively and barley provided the source to make beer. Egyptian farmers kept poultry, (ducks and geese) and raised cattle and goats for milk. Meat came from sheep, pigs and cows, and fish came from the Nile. Vegetables supplemented the diet.

Egyptians liked strong-tasting vegetables such as garlic and onions. They thought these were good for the health. They also ate peas and beans, lettuce, cucumbers, and leeks. Vegetables were often served with an oil and vinegar dressing. Figs, dates, pomegranates and grapes were the only fruits that could be grown in the hot climate. The rich could afford to make wine from their grapes. Baskets of figs have been found in Egyptian tombs.

Having a wide range of food, the poor Egyptian ate a fairly healthy diet including vegetables, fruit and fish. Poultry was mostly roasted for the table, but meat was mainly the privilege of the rich. Seasonings included: salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, sesame, dill, fennel, fenugreek and assorted seeds. The priests who performed the sacrifice of animals to the gods, were probably the only ones to eat beef.

Tomb paintings show hundreds of scenes that depict meat being boiled, while fowl are depicted as roasted. How pork fit into the diet is a mystery. At archeological sites, bones have been unearthed, by the Egyptians generally abstained, believing the vast amount of fat to cause leprosy.

Ancient Egyptian Agriculture

Every year in the heat of summer, the great Nile flooded, spreading over the valleys on its sides. When the water receded, it left behind rich earth deposits swept down from the Ethiopian plateau, a fertile planting ground for the food in the Egyptian diet. Pliny recorded ancient methods of Nile farming. The technique was "to begin sowing after the subsidence of the Nile and then drive swine over the ground, pressing down the damp soil with their footprints." In November they sowed the land, then reaped the harvest in April. The land was so fertile that it was even possible to grow two crops a year. Today the flow of the Nile, the world's longest river, is regulated by the Aswan High Dam.

Bread and Baking in Egypt

Bread was the staple food of most Egyptians. By the 12th century in Egypt, there were bread stalls in the larger villages. Though the poor ate mostly flatbread, the rich had a choice of almost forty types of breads and pastries.

Hot Baladi Bread

The mainstay of Egyptian diets, aysh (bread) comes in several forms. The most common is a pita type made either with refined white flour called aysh shami, or with coarse, whole wheat, aysh baladi. Stuffed with any of several fillings, it becomes the Egyptian sandwich. Aysh shams is bread made from leavened dough allowed to rise in the sun, while plain aysh comes in long, skinny, French-style loaves.

Egypt's remarkable records tell us that bread was made in more than thirty different shapes. They included the flat, round loaf now commonly called pita, still a staple food in Egypt. Sweetened doughs or cakes, treasured as food for the gods, were devised by combining honey, dates and other fruits, spices, and nuts with the dough, which was baked in the shapes of animals and birds. Since there was no sugar, honey was used as a sweetener by the rich, and poor people used dates and fruit juices.

Beer in Egypt

Beer was the national drink, made from the crops of barley. To improve the taste the Egyptians would add spices and it was usually stored in labeled clay jars. Wine for the upper classes was made from local vineyards. After the harvest was gathered, the workers would tread the grapes, and the juice collected . Other wines were made from pomegranates or plums. The Egyptian's basic food and drink, bread and beer, were made from the main crops they grew, wheat and barley. It is speculated that the Egyptians were the first to discover leavened bread. Though undetermined, we can imagine a piece of what we call 'starte'r falling into fresh dough.

Beans in Egypt

Along with aysh, the native bean supplies most of Egypt's people with their daily rations. Ful can be cooked several ways: in ful midamess, the whole beans are boiled, with vegetables if desired, and then mashed with onions, tomatoes, and spices.

FOUL (beans)

This mixture is often served with an egg for breakfast, without the egg for other meals . A similar sauce, cooked down into a paste and stuffed into aysh baladi, is the filling for the sandwiches sold on the street. Alternatively, ful beans are soaked, minced, mixed with spices, formed into patties (called ta'miyya in Cairo and falaafil in Alexandria), and deep-fried. These patties, garnished with tomatoes, lettuce, and tahina sauce, are stuffed into aysh and sold on the street.

Aspects of Cooking in Egypt

Egyptian food was cooked in simple clay pots, using wooden utensils and stored in jars. Fish and meat had to be especially prepared for storage. One common method, evidenced in frescoes, was salting. Another was hanging the fish in the sun to bake them dry. Egypt developed a thriving trade in dried and salted fish.

In ordinary families the cooking was done by the housewife, but larger households employed servants to work in the kitchen and a chef - usually a man - to do the cooking. The Egyptians had ovens, and knew how to boil roast, and fry food. There were few kitchen tools: pestles, mortars, and sieves. Archaeologists have unearthed early mortars with rubbing stones that would probably have been use to separate the chaff from the grain.

Egyptian Foods and Recipes

Ancient Roots - Today's Egyptian Food

The variety of Egyptian recipes is extensive, and utilizes many types of food. With a history of foreign trade, of invasions and the domination of other cultures, (Roman, Greek, Arab among them) Egypt has adopted many ways of preparing food. The influences came mainly from Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Palestine, and other Mediterranean countries, but even those were modified in Egypt to a great extent, adapting them to suit Egyptian customs, and tastes to make these foods uniquely Egyptian. The dishes are simple and hearty, made with naturally ripened fruits and vegetables and seasoned with fresh spices. The food in the south, closely linked to North African cuisine, is zestier than that found in the north, but neither is especially hot.

But we must remember that the early Egyptians were accomplished agriculturists. They cultivated pistachios, pine nuts, almonds, hazelnuts, and walnuts, still popular food today. From their orchards came apples, apricots, grapes, melons, quinces, and pomegranates. To this day, Egyptians love vegetables. Ancient gardens featured lettuce, peas, cucumbers, beets, beans, herbs, and greens. Pharaohs thought of mushrooms as a special delicacy.

Egyptian cuisine is known for flavor and its use of fresh ingredients. The staple in every Arab's diet is a bread called Aish (means life), which is a darker form of the Pita bread in the Greek culture. Fava beans are also important in the diet. At an Arab meal, one would expect to have a soup, meat, vegetable stew, bread, salad, and rice or pasta. Their desserts aren't rich like those of many other Arab countries, similar cuisine as it is and most dishes have the same name all over the middle east, mostly fruit is served after a meal. Egypt's cuisine includes bean stew and falafel with veal, lamb and pigeon which is also popular.

Specific Foods 

Boiled cabbage was eaten before drinking bouts to prevent getting drunk. Herodotus records that the slaves who built the Great Pyramid at Giza were kept going on "radishes, onions, and leeks," three of the world's oldest vegetables.

Molokhiyya is a leafy, green, summer vegetable. A traditional dish in Egypt and Sudam, some people believe it originated among Egyptians during the time of the Pharaohs. Others believe that it was first prepared by ancient Jews. Molokhia is nutritious soup made from a type of greens, known as molokhiyya or Jew's mallow (also called Nalta jute, Tussa jute, Corchorus olitorius), which is found throughout and in other Arab countries with the same climate as well as in Israel. Dried or frozen molokhiyya greens may be obtained from Middle Eastern stores worldwide. Consumption of molokhia was banned (along with a great many other things) during the reign of the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim (c.1000 AD). In addition to molokhiyya, the Egyptians make a variety of meat (lahhma), vegetable (khudaar), and fish (samak) soups known collectively as shurbah, and all are delicious.

Rice (ruzz)is often varied by cooking it with nuts, onions, vegetables, or small amounts of meat. Egyptians stuff green vegetables with mixtures of rice. wara' enab, for example, is made form boiled grape leaves filled with small amounts of spiced rice with or without ground meat.

Potatoes (bataatis) are usually fried but can also be boiled or stuffed.

Salads (salata) can be made of greens, tomatoes, potatoes, or eggs, as well as with beans and yogurt.

Yogurt (laban zabadi) is fresh and unflavored; you can sweeten if you wish with honey, jams, preserves, or mint. It rests easy on an upset stomach.

Rice and bread form the bulk of Egyptian main courses, which may be served either as lunch or dinner. For most Egyptians, meat is a luxury used in small amounts, cooked with vegetables, and served with or over rice.

The Egyptian way of making kebabs is to season chunks of lamb in onion, marjoram, and lemon juice and then roast them on a spit over an open fire. Kufta is ground lamb flavored with spices and onions which is rolled into long narrow "meatballs" and roasted like kebab. Pork is considered unclean by Muslims, but is readily available, as is beef.

Pharaonic Beer Containers

Pigeons (hamaam) are raised throughout Egypt, and when stuffed with seasoned rice and grilled, constitute a national delicacy. If you visiting Egypt, beware: local restaurants sometimes serve the heads buried in the stuffing.

Egyptians serve both freshwater and seagoing fish under the general term of samak. The best fish seem to be near the coasts (ocean variety) or in Aswan, where they are caught from Lake Nasser. As well as the common bass and sole, there are shrimp, squid, scallops, and eel. The latter, a white meat with a delicate salmon flavoring, can be bought on the street already deep-fried.

Native cheese (gibna) comes in two varieties: gibna beida, similar to feta, and gibna rumy, a sharp, hard, pale yellow cheese. These are the ones normally used in salads and sandwiches.

Egyptian desserts of pastry or puddings are usually drenched in honey syrup. Baklava (filo dough, honey, and nuts) is one of the less sweet; fatir are pancakes stuffed with everything from eggs to apricots, and basbousa, quite sweet, is made of semolina pastry soaked in honey and topped with hazelnuts.

Bbouzat haleeb or ice cream is a totally different experience from the rich American ice cream. Its quite light and gummy in texture. It actually stretches a bit as you spoon it. Misika (Arabic gum) and shalab (an extract from the tubers of orchids) can be found in most Mid-Eastern markets

Umm ali is another national dish of Egypt, and is a raisin cake soaked in milk and served hot. Kanafa is a dish of batter "strings" fried on a hot grill and stuffed with nuts, meats, or sweets. Egyptian rice pudding is called mahallabiyya and is served topped with pistachios. French-style pastries are called gatoux. Most homes and places serve fresh fruits for desserts, and it makes a perfect, light conclusion to most meals.

Typical Tea presentation

Although Turkish coffee has a reputation for being tart, its actual flavor depends on the mix of beans used in the grind. The larger the percentage of Arabica, the sweeter and more chocolate flavor. Ahwa comes in several versions: ahwa sada is black, ahwa ariha is lightly sweetened with sugar, ahwa mazboot is moderately sweetened, and ahwaziyada is very sweet. You must specify the amount of sugar at the time you order, for it's sweetened in the pot. Ahwa is never served with cream.

Ancient Egypt

"Egyptian civilization probably began about 3100 B.C., following a predynastic period from 5500 B.C. during which time hunter-gatherers settled in agricultural villages and animals and people migrated into the region from western Asia...During this time, as revealed by evidence from sites in the Fayum region, the population supported itself first by hunting the many wild species that lived in and around the Nile. These included wild fowl, fish, pigs, cattle, antelope, and gazelle. As the population began to establish agricultural communities, the wild pigs and wild cattle were domesticated. Hunting became more of a sport for the wealthy than a means for obtaining food, although poorer people continued to hunt game and wild fowl, and to snare fish to augement their mainly cereal and leguminous diet. Cattle, sheep, and goats were more useful to the poor for their milk, cheese, and butter than for their meat. Agricultural communities grew grains as well as legumes, and these became the major crops of the Nile valley. They provided the two main staples of Egyptian life--bread and beer. Grain was used as a currency, something with which to barter or to pay taxes and wages. The main grain cultivated in Egypt until the fourth century B.C. was emmer; barley was also grown and was probably the grain of the poor. Production of these grains throughout Egyptian history was the main agricultural activity and provided the basic diet of bread for the Egyptians...Grain was also used to make pottage or thicken soup or added to pulses, for lentils, peas, and fenugreek were also common at this time, and were the most important pulses until fava beans were introduced in the Fifth Dynasty. Honey or dates might be used to sweeten the bread...dates were culitvated and...also used to produce a sugary drink...other sources of food were lotus and aquatic plant seeds...Melons, watermelons, and chufa, or yellow nutgrass, were grown. Bread as also used to make the other staple, beer, which was part of the daily ration given to soldiers and workers....The making of beer was woman's work...Wine seems also to have been drunk at this early period."

---Food in the Ancient World, Joan P. Alcock [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2005 (p. 136-8)

"It is clear that the Egyptians enjoyed their food. Nobles and priests were particularly well served, with at least forty different kinds of bread and pastries, some raised, some flat, some round, some conical, some plaited. There were some varieties made with honey. Others with milk, still others with eggs. And tomb excavations show what a wide range of other foodstuffs the great had set before them even as early as the beginning of the the third millennium BC--barley porridge, quail, kidneys, pigeon stew, fish, ribs of beef, cakes, stewed figs, fresh berries, cheese...Much time was spent organizing supplies. Until about 2200BC the Egyptians perservered with attempts to domesticate a number of animals like the ibex, oryx, antelope and gazelle, and then, abandoning this fruitless occupation, turned to the more entertaining pursuits of hunting in the marshland preserves, collecting exotic vegetables like wild celery, papyrus stalks and lotus roots, trapping birds and going fishing. The Nile marshes and canals contained eel, mullet, carp, perch and tigerfish...The origins of salting as a preservation process remain obscure. Although in Egypt there was a positive link between salt's use in preserving food for the living and embalming the bodies of the dead. Preservation by drying presents fewer questions, if only because figs, dates and grapes fallen from the tree or vine would dry themselves on the hot sandy soil, and no lengthy period of experiment would be needed to establish that fish, for example, responded well to the same treatment...The peasants' food, like their way of life, was more circumscribed than that of the great officials...Their standard fare may have been ale, onions and common flatbread... bought from a stall in the village street, but they could look forward to quite frequent days of plenty when they feasted on the surplus from temple sacrifices or one of the great high festivals. They ate pork, too."

---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers Press:New York] 1988 (p. 53-4)

[NOTE: These books contain much more information than can be paraphrased here. Your librarian will be happy to help you find a copies.]

Stuffed Pigeon

How did Ancient Egyptians preserve their food?

Ancient Egyptians employed a variety of methods for food preservation. Great silos were constructed to preserve grain for long periods of time. Fish, meat, vegetables and fruits were were preserved by drying and salting. Grains were fermented to create beer.

"There is evidence that as early as 12,000 B.C., Egyptian tribespeople on the lower Nile dried fish and poultry using the hot desert sun. Areas with similar hot and dry climates found drying to be an effective method of preservation...Herodutus, writing in the fifth century B.C., describes how the Egyptians and their neighbors still dried fish in the sun and wind and then strored them for long periods."

---Pickled, Potted and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Processing Changed the World, Sue Shepard [Simon & Schuster:New York] 2000 (p. 31)

"...the Babylonians and Egyptians pickled fish such as sturgeon, salmon, and catfish, as well as poultry and geese. Sometimes salt was relatively easy to extract; in other parts it was more difficult."

---ibid (p. 76)

"Salt has been used to preserve fish since ancient times, possibly even before meat was cured. The early Mesopotamian civilizations relied on a staple diet of salt fish and barley proridge...Fish curing, depicted in the tombs of ancient Egypt, was so highly regarded that only temple officials were entrusted with the knowledge of the art, and it is significant that the Egyptian word for fish preserving was the same as that used to denote the process of embalming the dead."

---ibid (p. 79)

"For thousands of years the survival and power of a tribe or country depended on its stocks in grain. Harvesting, processing, and storing grain stocks was of huge importance, and war was declared only after harvest...One of the earliest records of large-scale food preserving was in ancient Egypt, where it was enourmously important to create adequate stocks of dried grain to insure against the failure of the Nile to flood seasonally. Huge quantities of grain were stored in sealed silo, where they could be kept for several years if necessary. Records from 2600 B.C. show that the annual flooding of the Nile produced surpluses of grain that were stored and kept to feed builders of irrigation schemes and pyramid tombs. The Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza was built around 2900 B.C. by slaves fed with stores of grain and chickpeas, onions, and garlic."

---ibid (p. 51)

"Dried saltfish was part of a soldier's rations. Roe from the mullet, a periodic visitor to the canals of the Nile, was also extracted during the drying process of the fish, to be pressed into large flat cakes and preserved."

---Food: A Culinary History, Jean-Louis Flandrin & Masimo Montanari [Columbia University Press:New York] 1999 (p. 42)

Meals & dining customs

"In Egypt banquets started in the early or middle afternoon, but few details are available about the eating of ordinary meals. The basic Egyptian meal was beer, bread, and onions, which the peasants ate daily, probably as a morning meal before they left to work in the fields or on works commanded by the pharaohs. Another simple meal would be eaten in the cool of the evening, probably boiled vegetables, bread, and beer; possibly wild fowl...The wealthy would expect to eat two or een three meals a day comprising vegetables, wild fowl, fish, eggs, and beef. Butter, milk, and cheese were also easily obtainable. Dessert would c onsits of fruit--grapes, figs, dates, and watermelons. In a Saqqara tomb of the Second Dynasty, a full meal was found that had been laid out for an unnamed noble. It included pottery and alabaster dishes containing a porridge of ground barley, a spit-roasted quail, two cooked lamb's kidney's, pigeon casserole, stewed dish, barbecued beef ribs, trianguar loaves of bread made from ground emmer, small round cakes, a dish of stewed figs, a plate of sidder berries, and cheese, all accompanied by jars that had once contained wint and beer. In the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians are around a small table a few inches high, using their fingers to eat. Normally dishes were placed in the center of the table, and each person sitting around dipped berad or a spoon into it. The lower classes continued this form of eating in the New Kingdom, but the upper classes then preferred to sit on tall cushioned chairs. Servants brought around water in small bowls to that guests could wash their hands before and during the meal."

---Food in the Ancient World, Joan P. Alcock [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2005 (p. 181-2)

"The Egyptian Banquet. For Egyptian peasants there were some feast days, as at the New Year and after harvest and local religious festivals, but the peasants preferred to be offered sports and pastimes rather than elaborate dining. Meat was probably given to them after religious sacrifices. Dinner parties or banquets appear to have been one of the favorite entertainments for the middle and upper classes of the Egyptians, but literary evidence is scarce. There is no word for banquet in Egyptian...The information for feasts or banquets comes almost entierly from scenes found in tombs. In the Old Kingdom they seemed to be mainly family gatherings...Banquets in the New Kingdom were more elaborate, with family and guests enjoying the meal. Pharaohs gave official banquets...Banquets usually began in midafternoon...The tomb scenes show the guests being greeted by their hosts and servants coming forward to offer garlands of flowers. Next basins of water are offered for the guests to wash their hands...Tomb scenes show men and women on alternate panels as if they ate in separate groups or in separate rooms...Guests could...be seated on...[chairs]... stools or cusions...They ate from small tables, but side tables were seemingly loaded with food in the almost buffet style, although servants would bring the food to the guests and offer them napkins to wipe their mouths. Jugs and basins were placed on stands nearby, ready for washing of hands and feet...The main food would be bread, fruits, pulses, and vegetables. Fruits would have included dates, figs, melons, and possibly fruits imported from other countries. Meat could be in abundance at banquets. Whole oxen were roasted; ducks, chickens, geese, and pigeons were served. Fish seems to have been less popular...Honey was a precious food, mainly the preserve of the wealthy, and therefore expected at feasts. Jars underneath the table held beer, wine, and fermented fruit dirnks...Toasts were drunk to the goddess Hathor...The meal would be accompanied by music...After the meal there might be storytelling or acrobats."

---Food in the Ancient World, Joan P. Alcock [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2005 (p. 188-191)

"Cuisine and Social Class. Elite Egyptians ate three daily meals: morning, evening, and night. Laborers probably ate twice daily...Social superiors might include lower-status diners at banquets, with different foods offered to each guest dependign on his or her rank. tablewares varied from magnificent gold, alabaster, and class for the elites to earthenware and base metals for workers. Spoons and knives appeared the table. High-status banquets were often segregated by gener...The genders mixed at family meals, regardless of status. Egyptians buried food with their dead to ensure a comfortable afterlife. Diversity in diet was a mark of wealth...Beer and bread appeared on everyone's table and were the most common form of payment..."

---Cooking in Ancient Civilizations, Cathy K. Kaufman [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2006 (p. 43-44)

In ancient Egypt, what would pharaoh feed his guests? 

Same as most rulers, the very best his land and wealth had to offer. And??? Plenty of it!

"The Ancient Egyptians lived well. Although they left no recipe books, we can still get a good idea of what the pharaohs and their people may have eaten from the wall paintings in their tombs, the meals they buried with the dead to ensure that they did not go hungry in the next world, and from the tales of travellers such as the Greek Herodotus."

---Food Fit for Pharaohs: An Ancient Egyptian Cookbook, Michelle Berriedale-Johnson [British Museum Press:London] 1999 (p. 7)

The feast given by King Mereptah in his eighth year for the Festival of Opet served these items: fish (filleted and salted), oxen, ducks (spit roasted), oryx, gazelle (basted in honey), beans, sweet oils (for sauces), celery, parsley, leeks, lettuce, bread, pommegranates, grapes, jujubes, honey cakes, heads of garlic, figs, beer and wine.

Falafel

---Ancient Lives: Daily Life in Egypt of the Pharaohs, John Romer [Holt, Rinehart and Winston:New York] 1984 (p. 51-3)

"A typical, lavish banquet consisted of a group sitting on the floor or at individual round tables. Often they reposed on low chairs or stools under which lay a basin for washing their hands, sometimes with a pet cat or monkey beside it. Men and women ate together, both dressed in flowing linen gowns that reached the floor The women held lotus flowers in one hand for the perfume and wore a perfume cone on their head made of a fatty substance that released a pleasing aroma as heat from the head slowly melted it during the course of the evening. Heaps of food completely covered the small tables There were breads of several shapes and varieties, whole roasted trussed fowl and joints of meat, several kinds of vegetables and assorted fruit...At an actual banquet...various courses would have been served one after another in containers. Plates were not used, but ceramic bowls, or more likely at such formal affairs, blue glazed and painted faience dishes would have held the food. Cups of similar material stood ready for wine and were continually refilled from large pitchers carried by circulating servant girls."

---Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians, Bob Brier and Hoyt Hobbs [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 1999 (p. 111-2)

[NOTE: this book has a "meaty" chapter on period foodstuffs (p. 99-115) and several references for further study.]

RECOMMENDED READING

Cooking in Ancient Civilizations/Cathy K. Kaufman (includes modernized recipes)

"The Ancient Egyptians' Diet," Life of the Ancient Egyptians, Eugene Strouhal [University of Oklahoma Press:Norman] 1992

"Food Culture of Ancient Egypt," Food: A Culinary History, Jean-Louis Flandrin & Masimo Montanari [Columbia University Press:New York] 1999

Food in the Ancient World, Joan P. Alcock