What Did the Ancient Egyptians Eat? A historical food guide for ages 8+
Updated: 5 days ago
Surviving as a human, when it comes down to it, is all about eating things and pooping the unwanted bits out. Which, I admit, sounds a little bleak, but if you forget to do the eating or the pooping, you are not going to last long as a functional human being. You’ll end up starving or involved in some sort of horrific poop explosion nightmare.
Anyway, people have been eating food throughout all of history. But they’ve been eating very different food throughout all of history too. Romans had a completely different diet to the Ancient Britain’s, who in turn ate totally different tum-fillers to the Aztecs. But, for this blog, we’re going to look at the eating habits of the people hanging out in Ancient Egypt.
So, what did the Ancient Egyptians eat? What food did they like? Let’s find out, shall we?
That’s a rhetorical question I should point out, I was just being polite. We are totally doing it whether you like it or not.
What did the Ancient Egyptians Eat?
Bread
Freely available and loved by rich Pharaohs and poor peasants alike, bread made up a lot of the calorie intake of the average ancient Egyptian. It was by far the most popular type of food. Emmer Wheat when into these loaves, so beware… fail to remove the spikelet chaffs before baking and you could break your teeth biting into the crust!
Beer
Drinking water before the discovery of germs was pretty risky. It was all too easy to drink dirty water and get a funny tummy (and by funny tummy we mean ‘death by pooping’). Instead, the Ancient Egyptians opted to drink beer, as the fermentation process got rid of most of the nasty germs. Don’t think they drank a nice lager like your grown-up, rather the beer was cloudy and had solid chunky bits in, like a gunky soup. But that’s OK, as it meant the beer was very nutritious and more like food, resulting in Ancient Egyptians drinking – and I guess, chewing? – the stuff every day!
Fruit and Veg
An apple a day keeps the doctor away. But that’s only because it rhymes. Apples don’t really have any magical doctor repelling powers. In fact, you can swap almost any word in to replace ‘apple’, and it still works:
A donkey a day keep the doctor away.
A choc bar a day keeps the doctor away.
A shotgun a day keeps the doctor away.
Anyhow, Ancient Egyptians ate fruit and veg! Some of the most popular of the 5 a day foods were scallions (a spring onion) and garlic. So, with the lack of modern dental hygiene practices, Ancient Egyptians must have had stinky breath chewing on onion and garlic all day long.
When it came to fruit, dried dates and figs were the nom-tastic favourites. Dried fruit was definitely best, as it lasted longer during the red-hot Egyptian summers.
Meat
Ancient Egyptians ate a wide variety of animals, scoffing ducks, pigeon, geese, sheep, goat, pigs, oxen, chicken (from around the 4th or 5th century BC onwards), mice and, most awesomely, hedgehogs. Hedgehogs were baked in clay, when the clay was broken open the spikes were taken with it, leaving only the – apparently very delicious – hedgehog meat. Watch out Sonic, don’t be going on a time travelling adventure to Ancient Egypt!
According to the first historian, Herodotus, one animal the Ancient Egyptians didn’t eat was a female cow. This was because the cow was linked to the goddess Isis and was considered sacred and super important. Though researchers reckon the builders of the Great Pyramid were fed beef every day, and the odds of all that beef coming only from oxen is surely pretty slim!
