Beans, which are highly nutritious, were consumed in vast quantities by the poor. Chickpeas, broad beans, brown beans (ful medames) and lentils were all grown from the Predynastic period onwards and must have made appetizing and filling dishes when boiled, mashed with garlic and oil and stuffed inside a flap of unleavened bread. More adventurous bean recipes could have included chopped onion, egg, and even fried balls of bean mixture similar to the filafil still served in Egypt today.
The tradition of generous hospitality which prompts modern Egyptians to share their meals with the strangers of a few minutes’ acquaintance has its roots in the gregarious customs of Dynastic Egypt. Semi-formal banquets were an important aspect of Egyptian social life and, as there were no restaurants or cafés, these were always held at home. In the absence of theatres, cinemas and night clubs, these dinner parties formed the main entertainment for the upper classes, and were hugely enjoyed by all. It is perhaps fortunate that those who were rich enough to throw such lavish parties were also rich enough to employ servants to cook the food and clean up the resultant mess. Unfortunately we have no written description of the progress of a banquet, and our information is therefore derived from the painted feasts recorded on tomb walls. These scenes suggest that, although there was every likelihood that a formal banquet would eventually dissolve into a drunken orgy of overeating, it always started with an ostentatious display of good manners and prim behaviour. As correct etiquette was universally regarded as a mark of good breeding the Old Kingdom sage Ptahotep provided a useful guideline for the socially inept:
If you are one of the guests at the table of one who is greater than you, take what is given as it is set before you. Look at who is sitting before you, and don’t shoot many glances at him as molesting him offends the Ka. Don’t speak to him until he speaks to you – you don’t know what may displease him. Speak only when he has addressed you, then your words will please his heart.
On arrival the party guests were greeted by scantily dressed young serving-women who presented them with a fragment garland of exotic flowers and a heavily perfumed wax cone to be worn on the head. There was no formal segregation of married men and women, and the servants led the most important couples to the places of honour: low chairs or stools placed next to individual tables groaning under heaps of delicious food. Those of lesser importance were happy to sit or squat on mats spread on the floor, and helped themselves to the same food as their social superiors. Throughout the meal extra food and wine were circulated by the servants, and the feasters were entertained by a spectacular succession of nubile girl dancers, acrobats and musicians singing rather mournful songs intended to encourage a proper appreciation of life. The injection of a potentially rather depressing note into the proceedings in no way deterred the cheerful feasters, and Herodotus tells us that all banquets routinely ended with a rather abrupt reminder of death; a small model mummy being exhibited to the revellers by a gloomy servant who warned the revellers to ‘drink and be merry, for when you die you will be just like this’. This anecdote possibly tells us more about Herodotus’ gullibility than Egyptian dining customs.
Although the tomb-wall party guests are served a tempting buffet, they are never actually depicted eating. They do, however, drink, and their cups are repeatedly replenished by the ever-willing maids. This slight inconsistency has prompted some linguists, influenced by the fact that the Egyptian word sti, ‘to pour’, also means to impregnate, to suggest that the scenes may be interpreted as a form of visual pun intended to emphasize the fertility of the deceased. Certainly more overt sexual references would have been considered out of place on a tomb wall.6
Yesterday’s drunkenness will not quench today’s thirst.
Late Period advice to young men
No accomplished host would have dreamed of inviting his guests to a meal without providing an unlimited supply of the finest wines for their enjoyment.7 Wine was drunk by men and women alike, and there seems to have been no prohibition on serving women alcohol. Indeed, occasional scenes of indiscreetly drunken ladies being horribly and publicly sick show that intemperance at banquets was regarded as a rather amusing joke for all, particularly when the sufferer was a woman: one lady depicted in the tomb of Paheri even orders the servant somewhat rashly to ‘Give me eighteen cups of wine, I want to drink to drunkenness; my throat is as dry as straw.’ The most universally popular party tipple was red wine made from grapes, a drink widely enjoyed from the beginning of the Old Kingdom onwards. The mass production of white wine probably didn’t start until the Middle Kingdom, although by the classical periods Egyptian whites were well respected by the bon viveurs of the classical world: the Greek–Egyptian Athenaeus admiringly described the wine of the Mareotic region as ‘excellent, white, pleasant, fragrant, easily assimilated, thin, not likely to go to the head, and diuretic’, the Taeniotic wine as ‘better than Mareotic, somewhat pale, has an oily quality, pleasant, aromatic, mildly astringent’ and the wine of Antylla province ‘surpassing all others’.