Egyptian Food and Drink

The two staples of ancient Egyptian life were bread and beer, both products of the abundant grain hartest of the fertile Nile valley. Bread was so important that over forty Egyptian words are nown for various loaves and cakes. The need to brew beer for the household apparently justified absence from work. This book surveys the constituents of the ancient Egyptian diet, with chapters on cereals and their uses, fruit and vegetables, meat, fish and fowl, and condiments. The means of growing vegetables in garden plots and providing fresh meat are determined from the remains of workmen's villages such as Amarna, Kahun and Deir el-Medina. The Egyptian kitchen is described with its oven, hearth and utensils, and the means of storing and preserving foodstuffs are explained. Lists of funerary and temple offerings and the accounts of wages for the royal workmen show the importance of food and drink to both the living and the dead, gods and mortals.