Tour guide acquires PhD on food and kitchens in ancient Egypt
CAIRO: There are diverse aspects to the ancient Egyptian civilization that many of us are fascinated by: the building of pyramids, the tombs that store mummies or hoards of gold, as well as the captivating paintings on the walls.
But few of us direct our attention to the ancient Egyptians’ cuisine and their kitchens. The issue would have remained sidelined, even despite of the fact that the walls in temples and tombs are replete with images showing the Pharaohs’ meals as well as the poultry and animals that made up part of their dishes. But when a tour guide’s interest in the matter drove her to study it, ancient Egyptian cuisine started to surface, attracting more attention to a topic once overshadowed.
Abir Enany, who earned her degree at Ein Shams University and once highlighted the topic of motherhood in ancient Egypt in a study that granted her an MA degree from the University of Alexandria, is dealing for the second time with an off-track subject relating to ancient Egyptians.
“This time the richness of the culinary scenes on the walls of tombs and temples that I have seen time and again while tour guiding has fuelled my interest in that part of ancient Egyptian culture, said Enany.
According to Enany, many of the kitchen and food preparation habits are still used in modern Egypt.
“For example, explained Enany, “the type of bread known as ‘Eish Shamsi’ (sun bread) that is baked for a while in an oven then left to dry in the sun on pottery bread platters, is one of the major items that remain to date part of the Egyptian villagers’ diet.
“Eating onions and fresh vegetables, placing the fresh bread loaves on a ‘matraha,’ (table bread); boiling and roasting meat and duck are all habits that have been handed over to modern Egyptians by their ancestors.
But for Enany the most interesting of these habits is the production of “fesiekh (rotten fish). “I would like to note, however, that the Ancient Egyptian technique of preparing ‘fesiekh’ is by far more advanced than ours.
“The ancient Egypt ‘fasakhani’ (fesiekh-maker) gutted the fish and got rid of its internals, a procedure followed to prevent bacteria from thriving in the fish. Unfortunately, this has been overlooked today and people now dry and salt the whole fish with its bones.
“Similarly cooking meat was as wholesome; pieces of meat were bundled together and hung to dry before they were cooked, which proved to be a very healthy habit of cooking meat, added Enany.
“Grains were crushed with mortars and then turned into fine flour with saddle querns. It was then mixed with water and other ingredients before it was baked, fried or used for the manufacture of beer, added Enany.
Enany explained that food was more than just a means of surviving in this life, because for ancient Egyptians, it was their fuel for survival in a life to come. Their tombs were, therefore, provided with food or models of different types of food. The walls were rich in scenes depicting food and drink as they were prepared and consumed in the hopes that these images will have the magical power of nourishing them in the afterlife.
Sometimes the utensils that might help in preparing a meal were buried in the tombs along with their corpses. The ancient Egyptians believed that even the dead needed to eat.
Enany’s study however is not just about food recipes as much as it is about the places where ancient Egyptian cooks turned these recipes into dishes.
“Earlier I wrote about the making of food in ancient Egypt, but in my PhD thesis I added that the large temples were equipped with huge and well-organized kitchens that provided fresh offerings to the gods living within these worship houses on a daily basis, as well as food to the priests serving them, explained Enany.
“Construction sites were also provided with large kitchens. A perfect example comes from the site of the Giza Pyramids, where sizeable bakeries and kitchens that supplied huge meals to the pyramids’ builders were discovered.
According to Enany, the ancient Egyptians considered healthy measures when building their kitchens, for they often placed the kitchen to the south of the building so that the north wind, which prevailed in Egypt, would blow the cooking fumes away from the house.
Ancient Egyptians also used a variety of tables, knives and spoons that reflected a high level of sophistication. In addition to the regular equipment, many kitchens were provided with sinks and garbage pits.
