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about preserving flesh.
To the Egyptians, a dead body was the vessel connecting earthly life to the afterlife. Eternal life could be maintained by a sculpted image of the person or even by the repetition of the deceased’s name, but the ideal circumstance was to have the body permanently preserved. At all stages of ancient Egyptian civilization a tomb had two parts: one, below ground, for housing the corpse, and a second area above for offerings. In simpler burial places, the upper part might be just the open area above ground.
The upper level makes clear the importance the ancient Egyptians attached to the preparation and eating of food. Elaborate funereal feasts were held in these spaces, and copious quantities of food were left as offerings. The feasts, and sometimes the preparation of foods, were depicted on the walls. Every important period in ancient Egyptian history produced tombs containing detailed information about food. Though the intention was to leave this for the benefit of the deceased, it has given posterity a clear view of an elaborate and inventive ancient cuisine.
The poorest may have had little to eat but unraised bread, beer, and onions. The Egyptians credited onions and garlic with great medicinal qualities, believing that onion layers resembled the concentric circles of the universe. Onions were placed in the mummified cadavers of the dead, sometimes serving in place of the eyes. Herodotus, the Greek historian born about 490 B.C. and considered the founder of the modern discipline of history, described the tomb of the pyramid of Giza, built about 2900 B.C. He wrote that an inscription on one wall asserted that during twenty years of construction, the builders supplied the workers with radishes, onions, and garlic worth 1,600 talents of silver, which in contemporary dollars would be about $2 million.
But the upper classes had a richly varied diet, perhaps the most evolved cuisine of their time. Remains of food found in a tomb from before 2000 B.C. include quail, stewed pigeon, fish, ribs of beef, kidneys, barley porridge, wheat bread, stewed figs, berries, cheese, wine, and beer. Other funereal offerings found in tombs included salted fish and a wooden container holding table salt.
The Egyptians mixed brine with vinegar and used it as a sauce known as oxalme , which was later used by the Romans. Like the Sichuan Chinese, the Egyptians had an appreciation for vegetables preserved in brine or salt. “There is no better food than salted vegetables” are words written on an ancient papyrus. Also, they made a condiment from preserved fish or fish entrails in brine, perhaps similar to the Chinese forerunner of soy sauce.
The ancient Egyptians may have been the first to cure meat and fish with salt. The earliest Chinese record of preserving fish in salt dates from around 2000 B.C. Salted fish and birds have been found in Egyptian tombs from considerably earlier. Curing flesh in salt absorbs the moisture in which bacteria grows. Furthermore, the salt itself kills bacteria. Some of the impurities found in ancient sodium chloride were other salts such as saltpeter, which are even more aggressive bacteria slayers. Proteins unwind when exposed to heat, and they do the same when exposed to salt. So salting has an effect resembling cooking.
Whether the Egyptians discovered this process first or not, they were certainly the first civilization to preserve food on a large scale. Those narrow fertile strips on either bank of the Nile were their principal source of food, and a dry year in which the Nile failed to flood could be disastrous. To be prepared, Egyptians put up food in every way they could, including stockpiling grain in huge silos. This fixation on preserving a food supply led to considerable knowledge of curing and fermentation.
Were it not for their aversion to pigs, the Egyptians would probably have invented ham, for they salt-cured meat and knew how to domesticate the pig. But Egyptian religious