Commerce and Food in Ancient Egypt

The Commerce of the Ancient Egypt, c. 1000
al-Muqaddasi

Egypt is a country of commerce; it is an important source of very fine leather, resistant to water, sturdy, and pliant; leather of sheep and asses’ skins, leggings and cloth of three-ply yams of camels’ hair and goats’ wool all these are from the metropolis. From Upper Egypt come rice, wool, dates, vinegar, raisins. From Tinnis . . . cloth variegated in colour; from Dimyat, sugar cane. From al-Fayyum, rice, and a linen of inferior quality; from Busir, shrimp, and cotton of superior quality. From al-Farma, fish, and from the towns around it, large baskets, and ropes made of fibre of the finest quality. Here are produced white cloth of the greatest fineness, wraps, canvas, the mats of ‘Abbadani style of very fine quality, grains, grass peas, oils of rape, and of jasmine, and of other plants beside these.

Ancient Egypt Commerce

Their specialities include reedpens incomparable! and their vitriol, marble, vinegar, wool, canvas, cloth, linen, leathers, shoes, leggings, geese, plantains, wax, sugar candy, fine linen, dyes, apparel, spun yam, waterskins, harisa, the sweet pastry called nayda, chick peas, lupin, cloves, amm, mats, asses, cattle, girdles . . . . Ancient Egypt Commerce.

The Food of the Ancient Egypt, c. 1200
Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi

Ancient Egypt Food

... In Egypt they extract oil from the seeds of the radish, tthe urnip, and the lettuce and use it for cooking. They also make soap from these oils; the soap made in Egypt is soft, red, yellow and green. It is this soap that the sweetmeat sapouniyyeh appears to have some resemblance, and from that it takes its name.

As for the stews of the Egyptians, those which are sour or ordinary have nothing in particular, or very little, different from those used elsewhere; but, on the contrary their sweet stews are of a singular kind, for they cook a chicken with all sorts of sweet substances. Here is how they prepare this ancient Egypt Food: they boil a fowl, then put it in a julep, place under it crushed hazelnuts or pistachio nuts, poppy seeds or purslane seeds, or rose hips, and cook the whole until coagulated. Then they add spices and remove it from the fire. . . .

As for the sweetmeats, these are indeed various and would need a special book to describe them. There are some kinds which are employed as curatives for certain ailments, and which are given to persons on a diet, the sick, and to convalescent persons, when they want something sweet to eat. Of this number are the khabis of pumpkin, khabis of carrot, the sweet called wardiyyeh in which the rose enters, that called zindjebiliyyeh which is made with ginger, the pastilles of aloes wood and of lemon, of musk, and many others .... ancient Egypt food .

Travelers in Egypt often wrote of the costume of the people for the Europeans, so very different to their own. The Arabic scholar, Edward Lane, sought to understand the purpose of the dress of the better-off males, Dr. Meryon described the simple clothes of the poorer women, while Elizabeth Cooper was fascinated by the lives of women of means.

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