http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/xmas98/magee/magee.html

Introduction
In today's society there is a general awareness of arterial disease
and its consequences. People know about coronary occlusions and
strokes, and cholesterol has become a household word. In the press
there are articles, almost daily, about diets, vitamins, forms of
alternative medicine, the dangers of smoking and the advantages and
disadvantages of consuming alcohol. Healthfood shops abound. The
stresses of modern living have been implicated in arterial disease.
While once senior executives worried about developing ulcers, now the
concern is about coronary vessels and blood cholesterol.
While we cannot be certain that the stresses we are subject to in our
time are any greater than the stresses on primitive peoples and those
who belonged to ancient civilisations, we do know they are different.
Thus, in a context of different stresses, different lifestyles and
different diet, it may be interesting to examine the occurrence of
arterial disease in the past. Human remains in many countries have been
examined by scientists, but those from ancient Egypt have probably been
examined in the greatest detail. This article presents an overview of
these studies in relation to arterial disease.

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Conclusions
In his writings on Egyptian mummies, Ruffer speculated on the causes
of vascular disease.2 He eliminated tobacco and syphilis, as neither
was known in ancient Egypt. Although the Egyptians consumed both beer
and wine, and did get drunk, as shown in ancient artworks, Ruffer's
contemporary experience of over 800 autopsies in Muslim abstainers
indicated to him that alcohol was not the cause of arterial disease. He
considered meat consumption as a factor, but, while admitting that
mummies represented the wealthier classes who may have eaten more meat
than others, emphasised that the diet was mainly vegetable and, judging
from dental wear, rather coarse. Ruffer also dismissed the stress of
everyday life, as he did not consider the life of the ancient Egyptians
to be any more arduous than at the time of his writing. His conclusion
was that the causes of the degenerative disease were just as obscure in
ancient times as they are now.2
Disease has always been a part of life. Evidence of it has been found
in the remains of reptiles of the Permian period through to the time
when ancient human civilisations began to record it. It is clear that
atherosclerosis is an ancient process, and its pattern has always been
the same regardless of race, diet and the stresses of survival.
However, in these days, modern man in may some ways encourage
atherosclerosis by smoking and consuming foods with a high fat content.

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But was it high-fat foods?

http://www2.sptimes.com/Egypt/EgyptCredit.4.2.html

Food and Cooking

Cooking was done in clay ovens as well as over open fires. Wood was
used for fuel, even though it was scarce. Food was baked, boiled,
stewed, fried, grilled, or roasted. What is known about kitchen
utensils and equipment is from the items that have been found in the
tombs. Storage jars, bowls, pots, pans, ladles, sieves, and whisks were
all used in the preparation of food. Most of the commoners used dishes
that were made of clay, while the wealthy used dishes made of bronze,
silver, and gold.

Beer was the most popular beverage, and bread was the staple food in
the Egyptian diet. The beer was made with barley. The barley was left
to dry, and then baked into loaves of bread. The baked barley loaves
were then broken into pieces and mixed with the dried grain in a large
jug of water and left to ferment. Wine was a drink that was produced by
the Egyptians, however, it was usually found only at the tables of the
wealthy. To make the bread, women ground wheat into flour. The flour
was then pounded by men to make a fine grain. Sesame seeds, honey,
fruit, butter, and herbs were often added to the dough to help flavor
the bread.

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http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/bread.htm

Bread in Ancient Egypt
by Jane Howard

Ancient Egyptians, depending on their wealth and status, could have a
varied diet, but central to their nourishment was bread and beer. From
very early on, both were consumed at every meal, by everyone, and no
meal was considered complete without them. Bread, nutritionally,
provided protein, starch and trace nutrients, and it also played much
the same role as beer in the Egyptian economy as well as in cult
rituals. However, some flour caused severe abrasion of the teeth
particularly among those who depended upon bread as their main source
of nourishment. But this affected all classes and even Amenhotep III
suffered badly from such problems.
Bread was made from a variety of ingredients, though often only a
specific species of wheat was thought best (Triticum aestivum), though
almost any cereal was suitable. Depending on the type of flour, the
structure and texture of a loaf could be very different, and just as
today, all breads were not light, risen or spongy.

Thankfully, the climate of Egypt, which is very arid in many locations,
is responsible for preserving a rich record of organic materials,
including bread loaves. Hundreds of specimens have survived, mostly
from funerary offerings that have found their way into the museums of
the world. These even include fragments from Predynastic graves of the
Badarian culture. Talk about stale! These loaves are over five thousand
years old.

These ancient loaves, though a direct source of evidence about ancient
Egyptian bread and baking, have actually not been studied much by
modern scholars. Hence, though many breads and cakes are known from
historical documents, their distinguishing features are in fact
unknown. Some scholars have suggested that pesen-bread was a flat round
loaf, not unlike that found in Egypt today. However, preserved loaves
have shown that breads of the same shape were not always made from the
same ingredient or the same recipe and, therefore, may not have been
known by the same name. For example, extant hand-formed conical loaves
were frequently made from emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum), though one
known specimen was made mostly from figs (Ficus carica). At the same
time, various shapes and textures of bread could also be made from the
same batch of dough.

We mostly know the process of baking from the evidence of artistic
scenes in which it is depicted. For example, one of the best examples
comes from a relief in a 5th Dynasty tomb at Saqqara belonging to Ti.
However, there are also Old Kingdom statuettes that portray baking
activities. Middle Kingdom models, notably from the tomb of Meketra,
also provide some details, as well as give us a idea of a busy, robust
bakery. Also, several tombs at Beni Hasan contain bread-making scenes,
and at least one other is found in the New Kingdom wall paintings of
Nebamun's tomb on the West Bank of Thebes (modern Luxor).

The preparations for making bread in ancient Egypt were somewhat more
difficult that in our modern times, principally because of the
distinctive nature of their staple wheat, emmer, which differs in some
properties from most modern wheat used to make bread. Emmer was used
into the Ptolamic Period. Today, typical bread wheat (Triticum
aestivum) has ears that easily separate into chaff and grain when
threshed. The traditional process for processing it uses winnowing and
sieving to remove the chaff from the grain.

However, emmer requires more extensive processing, which at least in
families was usually performed by women. Usually, only enough grain was
ground at one time to fill the needs of a day's meals.

After threshing, it breaks into packets called spikelets, each of which
is a thick envelope of chaff that tightly surround two kernels. Prior
to winnowing and sieving to clean the chaff from the kernels, a process
is needed to break the chaff apart without damaging the grain.

of the procedures employed to processes the spikelets by the ancient
Egyptians. We believe that whole spikelets were moistened with a small
amount of water and than pounded with wooden pestles in limestone
mortars. Since the water made the spikelets pliable, the chaff could be
shredded without crushing the grain kernels inside. This was not a time
consuming process, although the ancient Egyptian mortars were usually
small and several batches of spikelets had to be processed before
enough freed kernels were produced to make bread for even a family.
Even after this added process, the released grain kernels and broken
chaff then had to be tried, probably under the sun. Afterwards, it went
through a series of winnowing steps, and sieving, The sieves made from
rushes and the like were not very efficient and allowed grains of sand
and little flakes of stone to remain in the flour, especially when soft
mill stones were used. In fact, the last step in the process was the
removal of final fragments of chaff which were picked out by hand.

Next, the the whole grain was milled into flour, usually using a flat
grinding stone known as a saddle quern. From Neolithic times through
the Old Kingdom, these grinding stones were placed on the floor, which
made the process difficult. However, tombs scenes of the Middle Kingdom
show the querns raised onto platforms, called quern emplacements. Some
of these have been excavated at a few New Kingdom sites. They made life
much easier, and probably made the work quicker as well. Modern
experimentation with these  devices has shown that no grit was required
to aid the milling process, as has sometimes been suggested by
scholars, and the the texture of the flour could be precisely
controlled by the miller.

Baking also evolved over ancient Egypt's long history. Excavation of a
bakery dating to the Old Kingdom at Giza evidences that heavy pottery
bread molds were set in rows on a bed of embers to bake the dough
placed within them. By the Middle Kingdom, square hearths were used,
and the pottery moulds were altered into tall, narrow, almost
cylindrical cones. Then, by the New Kingdom, a new oven was introduced
with a large, open-clay cylinder encased in thick mud bricks and
mortar. The flat disks of dough, perhaps leavened, were slapped onto
the pre heated inner oven wall. When baked, they peeled off and were
caught before they could fall into the embers below.

Bread loaves are especially numerous in tombs of the New Kingdom, and
are not limited as to size, shape or decorations. In fact, some loaves
were formed into recognizable shapes, such as fish and human figures.
Others were not as fancy, taking simple shapes such as disks and fans.
The dough textures of these loaves range from very fine to mealy,
mostly only indicating the people, as today, probably had preferences
in the type of bread they liked to eat. Whole or coarsely cracked
cooked grains were often added, creating a texture not unlike modern
multigrain breads. Emmer flower was almost always used for these
loaves. Barley (Hordeum vulgare) was very rarely used in these bread
loaves, and the amount that does show up is in such small amounts that
it may have accidentally gotten into the mix. Somtimes, the sour dough
left over from the previous day might be added, or some barm from the
last time beer was brewed.  There were flavorings, such as coriander
seeds (Coriandrum sativum), honey, butter, eggs, oil an herbs, as well
as fruits such as dates (Phoenix dactylifera) which were occasionally
added. Yeast might also be added to some recipes, but leavening was not
always used.

Seemingly, brad flavored with more exotic ingredients were probably
only infrequently available to the poorer classes of Egyptians, though
more research is needed to determine what breads were available to the
various social classes. Unfortunately, funerary loaves comprise most of
our evidence of early breads, which might not be representative of the
day-to-day variety. However, the remains of cereal-processing equipment
and baking installations at settlements sites has provided some
evidence for the preparation of ancient Egyptian bread, and these sites
may yet yield up more typical loaves.

***

TC