Egyptians do make wine and Egypt does have a small, ever increasing annual production.  Wine making isn’t a new thing, in fact, Egyptians were making wine long before the Europeans and the systems that they had in place thousands of years BC was more sophisticated than many modern wine producing countries. Lists from the Fifth Dynasty discriminate between half a dozen types of wines and indicate the origin, the year, the vineyard, the winemaker and the owner of the vineyard! Grape remains dating back to the First Dynasty (3100 BC to 2890 BC)

provide proof of the existence of vines, however, the fruit came from Canaan to the Nile delta during the Pre-dynastic period. Vines were planted inside walled gardens and probably used as pergolas! Wall and tomb paintings provide insight into the actual manufacturing processes that would have consisted of treading and the resultant mush placed into a type of a ‘sacking-press’ which was, in turn, twisted by men in opposite directions until the juice was squeezed out into a container, poured into amphorae, closed with leather lids and sealed with mud so that the juice could turn into wine. Note, below – this

shows how wine was made. The Pre-dynastic period (starting around 5500 BC) saw hunter-gatherers (image below) settle near the Nile in little villages as they migrated into Egypt from Western Asia. They lived peaceful existences and supported themselves by hunting wild fowls, antelopes, gazelles, wild cattle and wild pigs – later they grouped into small communities, tamed the cows and the pigs and started to farm cereals (emmer, the most important grain was used as currency and barley was chiefly used by the poor) and the legumes available at the time. See image below for an interesting aray of

animals to be tamed – some were successful, some weren’t. Egyptians loved eating and in early history they feasted on pottages, soups thickened with emmer wheat, pulses, seeds and fava beans (only by the 5th dynasty). Tables groaned under the weight of sweet melons, watermelons, chufa or yellow nut grass and women turned bread into beer for soldiers and labourers.

FIG AND DATE BREAD

Ingredients

• 500 ml chopped pitted dates
• 500 ml chopped dried figs
• 125 ml unsalted butter, softened
• 1 ½ teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
• 500 ml boiling water
• 250 ml white sugar
• 250 ml chopped walnuts
• 2 eggs
• 375 ml flour
• 375 ml whole wheat flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½  teaspoon salt

Method

• Preheat oven to 175 degrees C
• Lightly grease loaf pan of your choice
• In a medium bowl, combine the dates, figs, butter and bicarbonate of soda.
• Pour in the boiling water, stir well and let stand for 15 minutes.
• Beat the sugar, walnuts and eggs into the date mixture.
• Combine the flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder and salt, stirring it into the date mixture just until blended.
• Pour batter into the prepared pan.
• Bake in preheated oven for 55 to 65 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean.
• Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

HUMMUS

Ingredients

• 225 g chickpeas
• 50 g toasted sesame seeds
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 5 tbsp sesame seed oil
• 1 tsp salt

Method

• Cook and puree the chickpeas in a food processor (or a mortar and pestle as was done thousands of years ago).
• Add lemon juice, garlic and sesame seed oil and process to the consistency of your own taste (or combine well until everything is smooth in the pestle and mortar, scrape out and set aside.)

Honey sweetened the palate in pastries (there was a huge variety), desserts, some forms of sweetened wine and as sweet drinks and dates were used throughout. Around 3,000 BC barley porridges, milk, eggs and cheese were added to the table and meat appears in the form of wild birds, beef, fish, mullet roe and stewed fruit and berries. They were tenacious in their attempts to domesticate ibex, oryx, antelopes, gazelles and even the wild birds for foie gras, but by 2000 BC they gave up trying and introduced the roots of the lotus (see image below), papyrus stalks and wild celery. More varieties of  fish (eels, mullet, carp, perch and tigerfish) were added to their diets. The Bible tells of grain preservation, the overflowing of the Nile and storage in huge silos on more than one occasion. We read, also, about the existence of wine and the fermentation of beer by using grains. Herodutus, in 500 BC, confirms that Egyptians at that time dried fish in the sun and the wind, made pickles and preserved and used sturgeon, salmon and catfish, poultry and geese. Slaves were fed with grain, chickpeas, onion, garlic – mullet roe was extracted from the dried fish. Life along the Nile (image below) hasn’t really changed too

much. Feasts (there is no word for ‘banquet’ in Egyptian) began in the early or middle afternoon and only Pharaohs gave official feasts. Peasants ate a morning meal of boiled vegetables, bread, beer that had been fermented with grain and possibly wild birds. There were no recipe books and all records of food are found on the paintings in the tombs. Clearly there is a major difference between food of the various dynasties. For example, Joan P. Alcock writes in her Food in the Ancient World that during the Second Dynasty, a full meal was found in a tomb that had been laid out for an unnamed noble. It was packed into pottery and alabaster dishes and the meal consisted of a porridge of ground barley, spit-roasted quail, lamb’s kidney’s, pigeon casserole, stewed fish, barbecued beef ribs, triangular 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 wine and beer.

DUKKA (DU’A)

A spice and nut mixture that can be sprinkled on salads or pasta dishes, mixed with olive oil and brushed on pita or pizza dough, or coated on chicken or fish and then grilled. You can also really good bread, dip it in extra virgin olive oil, then in the Dukka (Du’a).

Ingredients

• 500 ml shelled pistachio nut
• 500 ml almonds, toasted
• 1 x heaped tablespoon whole coriander seeds, toasted
• 1 x heaped tablespoon whole cumin seeds, toasted
• ½ tsp dried thyme
• 125 ml sesame seeds
• 1 tsp salt

Method

• Grind ingredients in an electric grinder carefully to prevent the release of oil from the nuts as it will give a moist mixture.
• You want to grind the mixture briefly until it resembles small breadcrumbs.
• The mixture should be very dry and crumbly, never a paste.

The feast given by Mereptah in his eighth year for the Festival of Opet consisted of filleted and salted fish, whole oxen, whole spit roasted ducks, whole oryx, honey basted gazelle and as vegetables, beans, celery, parsley, leeks and lettuce. Bread was served with heads of garlic and the fruits consisted of pomegranates, grapes, jujubes and figs. There were sweet oils and honey cakes and for drinking, beer and wine. An interesting aspect of heightening the senses was the fact that the women held lotus flowers in one of their hands so that the perfume wafted over them then wore a perfume cone on their heads that was fatty so that a beautiful perfume would be released when the heat caused it to melt during the course of the evening.