That it is in the texts engraved on the walls of the temples and the tombs or in the form of remainders of material offering, the Égyptiens of Antiquity left many testimonys of their mode of Alimentation .

The funerary art, recalling the daily life summarizes them; one does not find there strictly speaking receipts of kitchen but of information on the food practices. The Ouchebti S, small statues out of limestone or wooden, represent servants with work preparing the bread, crushing cereals, brewing beer, roasting poultries and flap of oxen.

Food

The basic food was the Pain and the Bière ( heneket ) manufactured starting from the Orge and of the Amidonnier. One found nearly a score of kinds of breads of various form and composition.

The Egyptian food mode was supplemented by Poisson, Viande (usually Mouton, and Porc, Volaille and ox for the special occasionss). The meat and the fish were generally roasted or preserved in brines, dried even crystallized. The fish more snuffed was the mule, or mullet, fish of sea going up the the Nile and of which the eggs were used to make the poutargue, receipt still practiced on the Mediterranean circumference today.

Garlic and onion are the the most cooked Légume S, with broad beans, the chick-peas and the lenses, without forgetting green vegetables (cabbage, cucumber, lettuce, leek, garden pea and radish), and the watery plants (lotus and papyrus).

The Fruit S, rather rare, are reserved for the elites, just like certain meats: the ancient Egypt knows citrus fruits only at the time Roman; the principal consumed fruits are the dates (used in the clothes industry of a beer of luxury, the seremet), the grape, the grenade, the water melons and melons, but also the carob, the sycamore (kind of red fig) and the perséa now disappeared.

Lastly, the Honey, produced ground hives, entered the composition of the desserts and many remedies. Pastry makings, often therapeutic, were very sweetened, containing dates, of honey or dry grapes. In the tomb of the vizier Rekhmirê, under the reign of Amenhotep {{II}}, a scene develops the stages of the manufacture of a conical cake, made starting from the rhizomes of a reed to the hazel nut taste, the shoveler duck.

If the Wine, consumed rather by the rich person, is not a very current drink in ancient Egypt, the beer has the appearance of a national drink for a long time. It is brewed in all the country, and its manufacture is already represented on mastabas of the Ancient Empire; one drinks beer in all circumstances: with the fields, on board boats, at the time of the receptions and, of course, in the cabarets of the cities.

Many of this food could be cultivated thanks to the fertile silt deposited at the time of the risings of the the Nile.

See too

• Agriculture in ancient Egypt