Cooking And Eating Scenes In Old Kingdom Private Tombs

Cooking and Eating Scenes in Old Kingdom Private Tombs

Dr. Ahmed Ebied Ali Hamed

Faculty of Tourism & Hotels, Luxor

South Valley University, 2013

Abstract:

Cooking and eating scenes were found in ancient Egyptian temples and tombs but rare. Egyptian food was cooked in simple clay pots, using wooden utensils and stored in jars and we have many aspects of cooking in ancient Egypt.

In ordinary families cooking was done by the housewife, but larger households employed servants to work in the kitchen and a chef - usually a man - to do the cooking. The Egyptians had ovens, and knew how to boil roast, and fry food. There were few kitchen tools: pestles, mortars, and sieves. Archaeologists have unearthed early mortars with rubbing stones that would

It is excellently preserved and details the manufacture of bread, beer and pottery, as well as the recording of the results by the scribes attached to the domain: a whole section of economic activity is summarized into a coherent composition. On the upper register, the grinding operation is repeated and each group of two or three grinders is faced by a squatting companion who sieves the product through a rectangular sieve into a jar, where it can be falling. While, in the lowest register, the grain after being withdrawn from its stores (west wall, extreme left) and pounded is being ground on the concave stone by kneeling woman and some grain is spilled onto the floor. Each woman is faced by a squatting companion.

On the other hand, there are workers often seen in tomb illustrations kneading dough with their hands, exactly in the middle register. On the side walls of the tomb, all of these shown offered to Ti and his family, and finally, the middle scene represented in addition the heating and filling of moulds in which dough is then poured to prepare hexagonal loaves called kmHw.

Mastaba of Mereruka at Saqqara (6th dynasty):

On the east wall of room A4 Mereruka's Mastaba, there is an interesting scene of drinking that a papyrus boat and a slim servant proffers Mereruka a drink. The tomb owner's is a fat brother with a duck in his hand being given a drink by a servant. Also, there is a scene

An Ox is being driven forward; birds are being put into cages or taken from them, and selected parts are being removed from two slaughtered Oxen. "Cutting up," or literally, "selecting" is the title given to this operation. The bottom register is occupied by baking and brewing. In the center is a person crouching in front of the oven, while poking a fire with a stick held in one hand and protecting the face from the heat with the other hand. Opposite the baker is a man piling the bread moulds on the oven, presumably taken from three rows of already fermented moulds behind