Food: Tradition and Change in Hellenistic Egypt Author(s): Dorothy J. Crawford Source: World Archaeology, Vol. 11, No. 2, Food and Nutrition (Oct., 1979), pp. 136-146 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/124356 . Accessed: 26/08/2011 16:05 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
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Food:traditionand changein HellenisticEgypt Dorothy J. Crawford
When he visited Egypt in the mid fifth century B.C. Herodotus, the Greek historian from Halicarnassus, was struck by the good health of the Egyptians which he ascribed to the consistent climate of the country, connecting it closely with their diet: They eat loaves made from emmer wheat (olyra)which they call kyllestis.The beveragethey drink is made of barley; for there are no vines in their country. They eat raw fish, dried in the sun or salted, and also quail, duck and small birds, pickled in brine; other birds and fish, apartfrom those held sacred, they eat either roast or boiled. (II 77- 3-5) The balanced diet of the Egyptians came from bread and beer ('wine made from barley' is Herodotus' description) supplemented by the wild life of the countryside, and fish and fowl which would, even after pickling, provide ready protein to supplement the cereals. To a Greek the natural resources of the land of Egypt, the Nile, its annual flood and the regular and plentiful harvest this produced, were something of a miracle. Commenting on the large population of Egypt in the first century B.C.Diodorus Siculus describes the use of other wild products which provided a cheap source of nourishment: They bring their children up with incredible ease and little expense; they feed them with plenty of raw vegetableswhich are in ready and cheap supply; they give them those papyrus stems which can be crushed for flour and the tops of the marsh plants, sometimes raw, sometimes boiled and sometimes roasted.(I 80. 5-6) In detail such accounts may be over-simplified but the main point is surely correct. There were available in Egypt, in the crops raised in the fields, in the palms, carob and other fruit trees which grew in the countryside, and the wild plants, fish and fowl of the Nile and the Nile marshes, the constituents necessary for a balanced and healthy diet. The extent, however, to which such a diet was actually enjoyed by the inhabitants of the country is worth investigation, even if only partial answers and preliminary conclusions are possible. To what extent did this diet differ over the long periods of Egyptian history? How far were there regional differences in diet? Herodotus for instance described the cheap and plentiful Egyptian diet summarized by Diodorus as especially typical of the inhabitants of the marshes of the northern Delta: World Archaeology Volume
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Those who live in the marshes. . . collect the water-lilies, called lotus by the Egyptians, which grow in large numberswhen the riveris swollen and floods out over the plains, and they dry them in the sun; then they pound up the centre of the lotus which is like a poppy-head and make loaves from it baked with the flour. The root of this plant is also edible; it is round, about the size of an apple, and tastes reasonablysweet .... They harvest the papyrus reeds which grow each year in the marshes and, cutting off the upper part for other purposes, they sell and eat the lower part left to about a cubit's length. Those who wish to eat the papyrus at its best bake it first in a red-hot covered pan. Some of them live on fish alone; they catch the fish, gut them, dry them in the sun and eat them preparedin this way. (II 92. 2-5) Cattle too were more common in the Delta regions than elsewhere (Butzer I976: 95), while the doum-palm grew only in the south (Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, II 6. io). Such regional factors will have influenced the available diet. The individual's diet is also likely to have varied accordingly to his more precise location, rural or urban, close to the river which served as an artery for the transport of all commodities, or, perhaps, in one of the oases. Status too is relevant in such an inquiry. In Herodotus' day the priests ate rather well: They have no expense or trouble in everyday life. The sacred grain is ground up for them and they enjoy a plentiful daily supply of beef and goose; they also have properwine. (II 37. 4) At different periods other members of the community might profit from their position, as high official or powerful police-officer. The small peasant farmer was always under threat: Rememberyou not the conditionof the cultivatorfaced with the registrationof the harvest-tax, when the snake has carried off half the corn and the hippopotamushas devoured the rest? The mice abound in the fields. The locusts descend. The cattle devour. The sparrowsbring disaster upon the cultivator. (Gardiner I941: I9)
Or later in the second century B.C.: Petesouchos son of Marres, cultivator from Kerkesephis, to Marres son of Petosiris his brother, greetings. You know how our lands have been flooded over and that we do not even have food for the animals. It would be much appreciatedif you would first offer prayers to the gods and then save many lives by searchingout five arouras*of land at your village to feed and maintainus. If you can do this you will earn my undying gratitude.Farewell.(P. Tebt.56) Besides social status nationality too might play a part in affecting the individual's diet. In a third century B.C. account of grain allowances made to workers on a Fayum agricultural estate the usual payments were in wheat. A group of Syrians, however, working on the estate, received their allowance in barley, the cereal normally fed to animals (P. Cairo Zen. 59292. 464--8, 470-2). The effect of invasion and conquest on a national diet forms a fascinating if subsidiary study to the more central changes which such conquest brings. It is the conquest of Egypt in 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, which may provide a starting point for such an enquiry. The evidence :for food and diet in Pharaonic Egypt is extensive; both tomb paintings and actual foodstuffs, wellpreserved in the dry climate of Egypt, have been the subject of various studies (e.g. One aroura=
0.25
hectare.
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Brothwell i969; Darby et al. 1977). This evidence, however, strongly funerary in nature, has a marked upper-class bias; it is hardly likely to be typical of the everyday diet of the majority of Egyptian peasants. The magnificent meal of a second dynasty noblewoman buried at Saqqara (Tomb 3477), excavated and described by Emery (1962), provides an excellent indication of the enormous variety of foodstuffs available. The meal to greet her in the next world consisted of: a triangularloaf of bread of emmer wheat (Triticumdicoccumcf. Dixon I969); an unidentified liquid containingsome sort of fatty substance;cooked fish; pigeon stew; cooked quail, dressed with its head under one wing; two cookedkidneys; the ribs and legs of beef; a dish containing cut beef; stewed figs; fresh nabk berries; small round cakes sweetened with honey; three jars of some form of cheese; wine. In real life our mummy had been able to chew on one side of her mouth onlyo. Her funerary repast might perhaps compensate to some extent for deprivation during her life-time (Emery i962: 8), though to judge from tomb-paintings such elaborate meals were by no means atypical. More extensive study of skeletal remains might permit the identification of nutritional deficiencies as well as straightforward physical disabilities. And more extensive seed and pollen analyses from habitation sites might begin to balance the evidence of the necropoleis. In the Graeco-Roman Fayurn town of Karanis for instance the following foodstuffs are recorded: cereals- wheat (Triticumdurum)and barley (Hordeumvulgare) - together with date, fig, filbert, walnut, pine (yielding pine kernels), olive, peach, Indian medlar, quince, pistachio, lentils, radish and lotus (Boak 1933: 87-8). With Alexander's conquest, however, new and more extensive sources of evidence become available to supplement the archaeological data. Papyrus documents are the most important of these. With Alexander and the successor dynasty of the Ptolemies came a new, Greek, ruling class and a new impetus to exploit the natural wealth of the country. Much of the machinery of government remained unchanged (though Greek was introduced as the new administrative language) but under the earlier Ptolemies, and especially during the long reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 B.C.), significant innovations were made in the agricultural structure of the country. Whether the initiative came from Philadelphus himself or from his close associates, men such as Apollonios, his finance-minister or dioiketes, extensive irrigation and reclamation works were undertaken, especially in the Fayum basin (Crawford 1971: 39-42 with bibliography). Construction work at the El-Lahun barrage, together with a network of high-level radial canals through the area, substantially increased the cultivable area. During the early years of Ptolemaic expansion large gift-estates were granted to the king's close associates (Apollonios received Io,ooo arouras, or 2,500 hectares, around the new town of Philadelphia in the Fayum, together with land in the Memphite nome), Greek soldiers were rewarded with plots of land in what was to become their new homeland, prisoners-of-war were set to work on the land and whole communities of native Egyptians were resettled (Rostovtzeff 1922; Preaux 1947). The cultivated area of the Fayum basin, earlier known as The Marsh and now renamed the Arsinoite nome after Arsinoe, the sister-wife of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, was as much as trebled in this period (Butzer
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1976: 47). New crops were introduced to the area; the cultivation of well-established crops was extended. Similar expansion may have taken place elsewhere in Egypt, especially in the Delta where further gift-estates are recorded, but it is primarily from the Fayum that evidence has survived in the dry sands. A series of niew village foundations surrounded the newly irrigated area and now, as cultivation has again decreased, provide from their deserted sites a source of contemporary papyri which illustrate the intense agricultural activity following this reclamation of land. Some of the non-cultivated foodstuffs of Egypt have already been enumerated - lotus and papyrus, fish, duck and quail - but throughout the history of Egypt agriculture was the main base of the food supply. And in charting agricultural change it is possible also to identify dietary change. A closer look at some of the detailed evidence from the Arsinoite nome in the third and second centuries B.C. may, to a limited extent, enable us to go beyond the simple consideration of the variety and availability of foodstuffs, which might provide sufficient nutrition for the existing population, to some of the other human factors arising from the imposition of a new ruling class on a traditional agrarian society such as that of Egypt. In making gifts of newly reclaimed land to their soldiers and associates the Ptolemies were both rewarding and attempting to tie them to their new country, but they were also, it seems, providing an ambiance in which experiment might take place both in methods of agriculture and in the crops grown. That innovation might be encouraged from above seems implicit in the approach of a third century B.C.Greek soldier settled in the Thebaid who sent the following petition to the king: Philotasson of Pyrsous,one of those settled in ApollonopolisMagnato King Ptolemy, greetings. Since there have been frequent failures of the inundation in the area recently, as always, I want, sovereign, to acquaintyou with a (water-raising)device [perhapsthe saqiya or water wheel] by which not only can you lose nothing but the countryside will be saved; for it is three years since the flood came over and there is real famine .... With your good will, sovereign,there will be real prosperity.If you agree, sovereign, I beg you to write to Ariston, the district officer,to give me a month's allowanceand to send me, or my petition, to you as soon as possibleso that, with your co-operationif, sovereign,you agree,there will follow within fifty days of the time of sowing, throughout the whole Thebaid, immediately a plentiful harvest. Farewell. (P. Edfou8) Whatever the crop envisaged here, and with only a fifty-day growing period it cannot be wheat, Philotas was primarily concerned with methods of cultivation and with extending the agricultural potential of the land. Attempts were also made to improve the actual crops grown. Athenaeus reports Diphilus of Siphnos on efforts to improve the Egyptian cabbage, which was rather bitter to Greek taste (IX 369f.). Seed was imported to Alexandria from Rhodes and for a year the vegetable was sweet and tasty; then the bitterness returned. In the papers of Zenon, the manager from 256 to 248-247 B.C. of Apollonios' gift-estate at Philadelphia, there survives further evidence for the introduction of new crops in an attempt both to make more permanent the cultivation of recently reclaimed land and to serve the markets of Alexandria, Memphis and other urban Greek communities. In 259 B.C. Apollonios was himself responsible for a long decree on the organization of the cultivation and taxation of oil crops in the country
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(P. Rev. Laws); many of these were suited to marginal land where salinity from poor drainage remained a problem despite the extended canal system (Crawford 1973: 248)0 Besides the main oil crops, grown as cash-crops under tight governmental controlsesame, castor-oil (kroton for kiki-oil), kolokynthos (gourds), safflower and linseedexperiments were made with other oil crops, poppy and lettuce, grown on the estate of Apollonios and recorded in the accounts of Zenon (P. Lond. VII 1994; 99 5). Other new strains of crops were introduced, garlic from Tlos in Lycia (Crawford 1973a) and chick-peas from Byzantium (P. Cairo Zen. 59731 = P. Col. Zetn. 69. 14, i6, 21i) Viticulture was much extended in this early period of Greek occupation and fruiit trees also were introduced in new orchards and plantations - figs, walnuts, peaches, apricots, plums and olives (Preaux 1947: 22-7). Besides crops, livestock was reared on the estate both for regular use and for special festivals which in the ancient world were always the occasion of meat consumption aind so played a significant part in increasing the protein intake of the regular diet. From 250 B.C. there survives the record of expenses connected with the transport, among other livestock, of five cages of wild boar from Apollonios' estate to his residence in Alexandria, as a present for the king for the festival of Arsinoe. Some of the boars died en route but nevertheless were skinned ready for consumption; meat could not go wasted (P. Lond. VII
2000).
The change which must have affected the diet of the greatest number of people, however, was the change in the main cereal crop of Egypt. All evidence up to the Ptolemaic period suggests that besides barley (Hordetim vulgare), tetraploid emmer wheat (a husked wheat, Triticum dicoccum)was the staple cereal crop of the country, the grain referred to as olyra by Herodotus and later in the papyri (Dixon 1969; Darby et al. 1977: 461-79). With the Ptolemies a naked tetraploid wheat (Triticum durum) was introduced to Egypt and soon completely supplanted the earlier emmer wheat. From Triticum duroumwas produced flour of two qualities: semidalis which was topquality flour and whole-wheat (autopyros) flour. A choenixof wheat yielded either half a choenix of semidalis (though this probably includes a milling charge) or one choenix of whole-wheat flour. Olyra continued to be grown but in decreasing quantities (Schnebel 1925: 94-9). Besides coarse loaves, a rough porridge-like substance known as chondros was made from olyra, and it is interestinig that on Apollonios' estate the daily food allowance drawn by Zenon, his brother Epharmostos and Styrax might on occasion come in this form (P. Cairo Zen. 59333. 58-70 (248 B.C.)). When chondroswas available Zenon forewent his normal bread allowance, though whether from choice or for the sake of convenience is unclear. Whether or not Zenon, a Greek though from Asia Minor, preferred his carbohydrates in fine quality semidalis bread (as it was sometimes drawn) or in. chondros, the new wheat caught on very quickly, and within one hundred and fifty years the switch to Triticum durum was almost total. The only cause for surprise is the silence of the sources. The change is well-documented, but no comment on it has survived anywhere in the papyri or the agricultural writers. The influx of Greeks to Egypt following Alexander's conquest will have put an increased demand, especially for cereals, on the resources of the country. Much of this demand will have been met by the extension of the area under cultivation, but attempts were also made to augment cereal production by the introduction of a summer wheat
Food: tradition and change in Hellenistic Egypt
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crop in areas irrigated artificially. On 27 December 256 B.C.Apollonios wrote to Zenon as follows: The king has ordered us to sow the land twice. Therefore as soon as you have harvestedthe early grain, immediatelywater the land by hand. And if this is not possible set up a series of shadoofs [water-lifting devices consisting of a bucket and pole] and irrigate in this way. Do not keep the water on the land more than five days and as soon as it dries out sow the three-monthwheat. And write to us when you are able to harvest it. (P. Cairo Zen. 59155) This three-month grain may have been the Syrian wheat first recorded under Philadelphus (Thompson 1930: 213) and is probably to be identified as einkorn; other cereal strains too were introduced and the Zenon papers record a wide variety of cereals grown on the estate (e.g. Persian wheat, P. Ryl. IV 57I. 4; native wheat and dark summer wheat (melanaither),P. Cairo Zen. 59731 = P. Col. Zen. 69. 25-6). Cereals had always been the staple food crop of Egypt. It is not therefore surprising that the Egyptian peasants embraced the improved wheat strains. But they were not enthusiastic about royal attempts to exploit the country with new methods and cash crops. Various reactions are recorded. Explicit criticism of the competence of the Greeks is preserved in a letter from some native farmers brought in to the Arsinoite nome: To Apollonios the dioiketes,the farmers from the Heliopolite nome, from the village of Philadelphusin the Arsinoite nome, from your Io,ooo arouras,greetings. After you gave us 1,000 arourasout of the io,ooo which we cultivated and sowed, Damis took away from us 200(?) arouras, and when we protested, carried off three of our elders until he compelled them to sign a deed of renunciation.And although we were willing to move from the I,ooo arouras,and asked him to bear with us only until we had preparedthe land and sown it, he still refused, and allowed the land to remain unsown. There is a further official, an Egyptian, one of an evil tribe, who does not allow the city to be settled, but drives away those who try to come here. A large number of mistakeshave been made in the 0o,ooo arouras,since there is no one experiencedin agriculture.... (P. Lond. VII 1954. I-8 (257 B.C.)) Alternatively the native population might show their disapproval by non-co-operation. From the mid-third century B.C. a papyrus from the North-west Fayum gives details, for four villages, of the annual crop order which attempted to control centrally the crops sown throughout the country. Figures are given for the distribution of what actually had been sown and the official adjustments made to the original demands in the light of the actual state of cultivation (SB 4369 a-b). What is striking is the noncultivation of the commercial oil crops, flax, safflower and poppy, as specified in the crop order, and the preference of the peasants to plant the subsistence crops they knew and needed, durum wheat, barley, a little olyra and vetch for fodder (VidalNaquet I967: 25-36). The conflict of interest between native and immigrant was both economic and cultural. The intense experimentation and agricultural activity of the North Fayum in the time of Philadelphus did not, it seems, continue, and a more typical picture of agriculture, and probably therefore of peasant diet, may be seen from the late second century B.C. South Fayum village of Kerkeosiris. Here in i i6-i i5 B.C. crops sown in the village were as follows (Crawford I97I: I84-6 with P. Tebt. IV):
142
Dorothy J. Crawford arouras
%
wheat barley
994 55
55 3
lentils beans
I86
i
196
ix
crop
fenugreek vetch (arakos) black cummin grass
fodder crops pasturage
33 178 2 18
8I 60 1,803
2 o o'I 0'9
4 3 100
The pattern is similar for the ten years for which details survive, with wheat regularly accounting for about 55 per cent of the sown land. Barley, used for brewing as well as for food (chiefly for animals), was less important, but both beans and lentils with their high nutritive value (Mottram and Graham 1956: 301-2) were grown in significant quantities. Fodder crops (vetches, grasses and fenugreek for rapid fattening) accounted for 17 per cent of the land and fed the donkeys used for transport, the sheep which belonged to the temples (P. Tebt. 53. 7, 1 B.c.) and the cattle of the village (P. Tebt. 66. 75-6, 121-120 B.C.). The seeds of fenugreek were probably also used to make broth still so popular in Egypt today; cummin (and in some years garlic) was also grown on the village land. Besides the naturally irrigated basin of the village where these crops were sown, there were in addition 69-5 arouras (I7.37 hectares) designated as 'land of the village and its surrounds', where the mud-brick housing was located and also the pigeon houses. Not only did pigeons provide additional protein, but they were, and still are, an important source of dung for fertilizer. It was also here in the small, artificially irrigated gardens that were grown the lettuce, cabbage, fennel, figs and dates mentioned in the papyri and grown locally for home consumption. The food available at Kerkeosiris, therefore, was both varied and well-balanced (for requirements see Carpenter 1969). Salt would need to be brought into the village (this was centrally controlled with a universal salt tax), but carbohydrate, protein, minerals and vitamins were all available in crops grown locally or in livestock fed on these crops. Calcium might come from sheep's milk and glucose from honey and from dates. As today the many species of date were highly prized and would always form a suitable 'present' to a patron; they are also rich in carbohydrates and contain some protein. From a neighbouring village in the second century B.C. some troops wrote to their army officer as follows: From Nekpheros son of Sentheus and the division in Lagis under your command. We have been placed under your protectionand you, in your turn, have acceptedus; we shall give you, when the time comes, ten measuresof dried dates, one measure of Syrian dates and two jars of pickled olives. (PSI 13I3)
In the countryside it was basically a natural economy which prevailed and the village scribe of Kerkeosiris secured his reappointment in this post in 19 B.C. by the promise
Food: tradition and change in Hellenistic Egypt
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to his superior of fifty measures of wheat and fifty measures of pulses - lentils, bruised beans, peas, mixed seeds, mustard and parched pulse (P. Tebt. 9). At Kerkeosiris, however, whereas the record of crops is explicit, evidence for the size and spread of the population is far less certain and any detailed calculation of individual diets is hazardous. More specific evidence for levels of nutrition in Egypt at this period may perhaps be obtained from considering different food allowances. Food allowances had a long history in Egypt. Their purpose was to allow the workman not involved in subsistence agriculture to subsist while otherwise employed, rather than to reward services. Herodotus (II 168) records the daily allowance of the royal bodyguard in the twenty-sixth dynasty. Besides a grant of three hectares of tax-free land they received a daily allowance of five minae (350 gr.) of parched cereal, two minae (140 gr.) of beef and four measures of wine - a not unreasonable allowance. Many similar examples could be quoted from other periods (e.g. Jannsen I975: 471-93). Two Ptolemaic examples of food allowances from the third and second centuries B.C. and from two very different communities may illustrate the ranges possible. Firstly, from the Zenon papers of the mid-third century B.C. there survive numerous references to grain allowances, sitometriai. These allowances, made to Apollonios' employees, were reckoned on a daily basis; they might be issued in flour (e.g. P. Cairo Zen. 59004, from Palestine) or, more commonly, in wheat (e.g. P. Cairo Zen. 59333). The normal range of allowances was from one to two choenikesa day (Reekmans I966 with Duncan-Jones 1979). It would be possible, working from these figures, to give a daily allowance in terms of calories (e.g. Reekmans 1966: 55-7 with the choenix at o098235 litres), but given the variables in such a calculation, the differences in wheat and the uncertainty in milling charges and extraction rates (Moritz I958: I84-94) such figures lend a somewhat misleading impression of precision. For purposes of comparability calculations in terms of unmilled wheat are probably more reliable. On the basis therefore of a 40-choenix artaba, reckoning the choenixat o-8o8 litres (Duncan-Jones 1976: 44), the annual allowances were in the range of 9'I25-I8'25 artabas or 294-92589-85 litres. Working from Pliny's weight for Alexandrian corn (Natural History XVIII 66) of 2o0- Roman pounds (6-812 kg.) to a modius, making 25-545 kg. to the 40-choenix artaba, the equivalent weight to these allowances would be 233o09-466 19 kg. of unmilled wheat a year. Clark and Haswell in their study of subsistence diets reckon 250-300 kg. as an annual minimum per person in units of unmilled grain (1970: 62). The figure must vary with climate and body weight but nevertheless may serve as a standard against which to assess the sitometriai of Apollonios' estate. It appears that the grain allowances made to his employees (233-466 kg. p.a.) would be at least sufficient to satisfy their basic needs. And many employees had other means of support, land which. they rented from Apollonios or the king, or commercial interests. There was no reason for malnutrition among this group of workers. The second example is from the very Egyptian community of the Serapeum, the cult complex of present-day Saqqara in the desert west of Memphis (Ray I978: 149-57). When on 6 April 154 B.C. the Apis bull currently worshipped in the Ptah temple in Memphis died and mummification proceedings were begun, twins, the girls Taous and Thaues, were employed to take the parts of Isis and Nephthys in these ceremonies. Their predecessors in this role had been granted twelve artabas a month of olyra,
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the native Egyptian emmer wheat, from the syntaxis, the block grant made by the state to the temples (UPZ 54. 29-33). It is interesting that even after over one hundred and fifty years of Greek presence in Egypt the older grain of Egypt was still in regular use in this temple community. Although Taous and Thaues, through their sponsor the Greek Ptolemaios son of Glaukias, also claimed twelve artabas as their right, in practice the allowance granted them seems to have been eight artabas a month, four artabas each which, when paid, might come in the form of loaves at the rate of fifteen pairs of loaves to the artaba or four loaves each a day (UPZ 54). In addition to a daily olyra allowance (UPZ 42-54) the twins were also granted one measure of sesame oil and one of castor oil (kiki) a year (UPZ i7-4I), which would serve for lighting purposes. Reckoning at o-8o8 litres to the choenix with a 40o-choenixartaba and adding on the five extra days at the end of the year, four artabas a month is the equivalent of an annual allowance of 48.66 artabas or 1,572 9 litres per person. At the higher rate of six artabas each the twins would have received 2,359.36 litres each a year. In terms of weighti, again using Pliny's figures, these allowances may be expressed as 1,243 kg. (at four artabas a month) or i,864-78 kg. (at six artabas a month) of unmilled emmer wiheat a year. This is an extremely high allowance and what was not needed for basic subsistence would presumably be negotiable against other goods. In practice, however, in the troubled years of the i6os the twins' ration was often not paid at all, or only at half or quarter-rate. The twins (and Ptolemaios) were vociferous in their complaints; they petitioned officials, both in Memphis and the necropolis, and finally, 'hard pressed by need and weakened by hunger' (UPZ 42. 8-9) they addressed Ptolemy Philometor and his queen in person. No reaction is recorded. Yet in spite of their difficulties life continued for the twins and their circle, and nutritionally was far from intolerable. Even at a quarter-rate of the lower figure they would be receiving 3io'75 kg. unmilled emmer wheat a year, which is on the high side for a subsistence diet. Accounts kept on the twins' behalf (UPZ 84-5; 89; 96; 104) record the purchase of a wide variety of items of food: corn, loaves of white-bread (made from Triticumdurum)and of kyllestis-bread (made from olyra), cakes of meal and oil, milk-cakes, honey-cakes, goose-meat, offal, honey, kiki-oil, milk, beer, water, salt, sauce, pomegranates, walnuts, figs, mulberries, lettuce, turnips, small cabbages, papyrus, chick-peas, sesame, fennel, garlic and cummin. Most of these items were presumably for private consumption and even in hard times it would appear that temple employees might enjoy a varied and interesting diet. To this extent the somewhat privileged position of such temple workers and the dietary patterns of pre-Hellenistic Egypt continued under the new Greek rulers. 2o.iv. I979
Girton College
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Abstract Crawford, Dorothy J.
Food: tradition and change in Hellenistic
Egypt
Given the predictable climate and annual flood of the Nile, a rich and varied diet was always available in Egypt, both from cultivated crops and the wild flora and fauna of the country. Evidence for diet in the Pharaonic period tends to an upper-class bias, being mainly funerary in nature. With the arrival of the Ptolemies and their Greek bureaucracy, documentary evidence adds to the picture. New crops, especially new strains of wheat, were introduced for the changing urban markets; they met with some native resistance. Records of corn allowances permit a detailed consideration of some workers' diets. In this respect the temples remained centres of conservatism and privilege.
