|
Food and Drink
Eating Habits
Food and drink were prepared to nourish both the living and the dead. In the Old Kingdom people squatted at low tables or stands to eat the food piled on the table, while their drinking bowls stood under the table or on another stand. In the New Kingdom these traditions continued for the poor, but wealthy people now sat on high chairs and were waited on by their servants. They ate with their fingers, and afterward water was poured over their hands from a ewer into a basin kept on a stand in the dining room. Diet The ritual menus shown on the walls of the tombs provide information about the diet of the wealthiest people, and occasionally repasts have been found in the tombs set out on individual dishes. It was customary for the relatives of the deceased to supply food offerings at the tomb to nourish his spirit. This duty was frequently delegated to a special priest, and to avoid starvation if this task were ever neglected, a menu inscribed in the tomb could be magically activated by the deceased. These funerary lists include ten sorts of meat, five kinds of fowl, sixteen kinds of bread and cake, six kinds of wine, four different beers, and eleven varieties of fruit. There is sufficient evidence to show that fashions in dishes and food preparation changed over the centuries and that foreign recipes supplemented Egyptian cooking. In the New Kingdom delicacies were introduced from Syria and Asia Minor. The Egyptians enjoyed unusual breads and imported wine and beer, but sometimes foreigners resident in Egypt produced these new products locally. The staple diet of the poor consisted of bread, beer, and onions. They lived and ate frugally, eking out their rations with any extra fruit and vegetables they could grow. Conversely, the nobles and landowners ate well from the produce of their estates, and the priests received payment for their temple duties in the form of the food and drink that reverted from the temple god’s altar at the conclusion of the thrice-daily ritual. The staple food of all classes was bread, and bread making was an important task of all households. Beer, produced from ground barley, was the Egyptians’ favorite drink and was prepared in a “brewery” or special area of the kitchen devoted to this purpose. Wine was another favorite beverage, and even as early as the Old Kingdom there were six distinct types of wine grown in different parts of Egypt. From the New Kingdom onward various wines were mixed together in large vessels to provide a potent drink for the celebration of feasts and special occasions.
Meat and fowl appeared among the dishes enjoyed
by the wealthy and included beef, goat, mutton, pork (although for
some social and religious groups, this was forbidden), goose, and
pigeon. Butchery is shown in tomb and temple scenes and was
obviously well organized, but meat had to be consumed immediately
after slaughter and was a food for feast days rather than part of
the daily diet. Animal husbandry provided most of the meat and fowl
since by the historic period, hunting had become a sport rather than
a means of supplying food, except perhaps occasionally for the royal
family or the temples. Fish were caught by many people and provided
an important additional element to their diet. Egypt produced a rich
harvest of vegetables and fruit. These included figs, dates,
pomegranates, grapes, onions, garlic, leeks, romaine lettuce,
radishes, chicory, cucumbers, and melons. Others found in Egypt
today (oranges, bananas, lemons, mangoes, peaches, almonds,
tomatoes, and sugarcane) were only introduced in the Greco-Roman
Period or later times. Popular herbs were coriander, dill, and mint.
In harvesting their crops the ancient Egyptians sometimes employed
the assistance of animals, such as the tame monkeys who are shown in
the tomb scenes climbing the stout branches of the fig trees to help
the gardeners gather figs. Milk was provided by farm animals, and in
the absence of sugar, honey was used as a sweetener.
.
Food Preparation Very little is known of how the food was prepared or cooked, as no Egyptian cookery book has yet been discovered. The contents of the tomb of Kha, a senior workman at Deir el- Medina, were found intact and are now housed in the Turin Museum, Italy. Food placed in his tomb included shredded vegetables, bunches of garlic and onions, bowls of dates, raisins, and persea fruits, and spices including juniper berries and cumin seeds. Spit-roasting over live embers was the usual method of cooking a goose or fish. They also had stone hearths or metal braziers on which smaller pots were placed; larger pots were propped on two supports over the open fire, and in the late New Kingdom cooks used great metal cooking pots, presumably to prepare dishes where the vegetables, fish, herbs, spices, and occasionally fragments of meat and fowl were mixed together and braised slowly. .
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Food and Drink
|
||||
