ancient egypt: history and culture
Ancient Egyptian plants: Vegetables
Main menu Main Index and Search Page History List of Dynasties Cultural chronology Mythology Aspects of Life in Ancient Egypt Glossary of ancient Egyptian terms Herodotus on the pharaohs Ancient Egyptian texts Apologia and Bibliography
Printout
  For best results save the whole webpage (pictures included) onto your hard disk, open the page with Word 97 or higher, edit if necessary and print.
  Printing using the browser's print function is not recommended.
-

Vegetables

Lettuce     The ancient Egyptians grew a wide variety of vegetables: Onions, garlic, leeks, lettuce, radishes, choriander, cabbages, cucumbers, watermelons, melons, raphanus, a wild radish tasting like turnip, beans, chick peas, lupins, lentils and peas. They were grown in little garden plots, adjacent to the house and required quite a bit of effort as they had to be watered regularly.
    Not everybody seems to have liked the natural taste of the radish:
In Egypt, too, the growers sprinkle nitre over them, the roots being remarkable for their mildness. The salt, too, has the similar effect of removing all their pungency, and when thus treated, they become very similar in their qualities to radishes that have been boiled: for when boiled they become sweet and mild, and eat, in fact, just like turnips.
Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, Book 19, Chap.26
    The seeds of raphanus and lettuce were pressed to extract oil. The lettuce oil was used in cooking while the badly smelling raphanus oil was employed in medicine.
In Egypt the radish is held in very high esteem, on account of the abundance of oil that is extracted from the seed. Indeed, the people of that country sow this plant in preference to any other, whenever they can get the opportunity, the profits derived from it being larger than those obtained from the cultivation of corn, and the imposts levied upon it considerably less: there is no grain known that yields a larger quantity of oil.
Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, Book 19, Chap.26
    Onions and garlic were also extensively used in medicine, lettuce, dedicated to the fertility god Min, was thought to increase virility:
Seth, great in virility, the son of Nut, said: "As for me, I am Seth, greatest in virility among (the) Ennead...
....
Isis at morning time went carrying the semen of Horus to the garden of Seth and said to Seth's gardener: "What sort of vegetable is it that Seth eats here in your company?" So the gardener told her: "He doesn't eat any vegetable here in my company except lettuce." And Isis added the semen of Horus onto it. Seth returned according to his daily habit and ate the lettuce, which he regularly ate. Thereupon he became pregnant with the semen of Horus.
    The antibacterial qualities of the onion were exploited in mummification. Onion rings were at times packed into the wrapping and the eye lids were covered with them.
    According to Pliny onions were divine in Egypt
Garlic and onions are invoked by the Egyptians, when taking an oath, in the number of their deities.
Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, Book 19, Chap.32
To this the editors of the Natural History, John Bostock and H.T. Riley, added:
The inhabitants of Pelusium, more particularly, were devoted to the worship of the onion. They held it, in common with garlic, in great aversion as an article of food. At Pelusium there was a temple also in which the sea-squill was worshipped.
Picture source:
[  ] Lettuce on broken stela: Min, Petrie Museum website
 
 
 
 -Home
-Index of Topics
-Ancient Egyptian Botanical
© 2002
CSE xhtml validated
-