Food and beer in ancient Egypt: what people really ate and drank

What did ancient Egyptians eat every day?

Bread and beer were the core of every meal, eaten with onions, leeks, garlic, lettuce, cucumbers, pulses such as lentils, chickpeas and fava beans, and, when available, fish. Workers' wages were paid largely in bread and beer, so for most people they were both food and income.

The pyramid builders ate better than legend suggests. Excavations at the workers' town south of the Giza plateau found large bakeries with stacks of bell-shaped bread moulds, and bones of cattle, sheep and goats, suggesting a well-organised supply of meat for at least some of the workforce. Herodotus, writing some 2,000 years after the pyramids were built, claimed an inscription recorded how much was spent on radishes, onions and garlic for Khufu's workers; the story says more about Greek guides than about Old Kingdom accounts.

How was bread made?

Women ground emmer wheat or barley by hand on a stone quern, mixed the flour with water and often sourdough starter, and baked it in clay moulds set in hot ashes or on the walls of a clay oven. Texts name dozens of kinds of bread and cake, some shaped into animals or cones, and some sweetened with dates or honey.

Grinding by hand left tiny particles of stone and sand in the flour, and Egyptologists studying mummies find teeth worn flat, even in young adults. Wooden tomb models of the Middle Kingdom show whole bakeries at work, with figures grinding, kneading and tending ovens. The round flatbread sold on every Cairo street today, aish baladi, is not a direct copy, but it continues a very long tradition; see our guide to Egyptian bread.

What was ancient Egyptian beer like?

Thick, cloudy and nourishing, made by fermenting a mash of barley or emmer, either from lightly baked bread loaves or from malted grain, then straining it. It was probably lower in alcohol than most modern beer, and it was drunk by everyone, children included, as a safe, filling part of the daily diet. The Egyptian word was henqet.

Brewing was big business. In 2021 an Egyptian–American team announced what may be the world's oldest known large-scale brewery, about 5,000 years old, at Abydos, with vats that could produce tens of thousands of litres at a time, apparently for royal rituals. Beer also had a sacred role: in one myth, the sun god Ra stopped the lioness goddess Sekhmet destroying humanity by flooding the fields with beer dyed red to look like blood; she drank it, fell asleep and woke as gentle Hathor. Festivals of drunkenness in Hathor's honour remembered the story. In parts of Upper Egypt and Nubia a thick, mildly alcoholic fermented drink called bouza is still made today.

Did ancient Egyptians drink wine?

Yes, but mainly the wealthy: wine came from vineyards in the Delta and the western oases and was stored in jars labelled almost like a modern bottle. Jar labels record the year of the king's reign, the estate, and the name of the chief vintner, and some grade the wine as “good” or “very good”.

Tutankhamun was buried with about two dozen wine jars, and later chemical analysis identified both red and white wine among them. A drink called shedeh, perhaps a strong grape-based wine, was also prized. Grape harvests, treading and pressing are shown in tomb paintings, most famously in the small Theban tomb of Nakht. Egypt still makes wine today, and our alcohol in Egypt guide covers what you can drink on your trip.

What else was on the ancient Egyptian table?

A surprisingly varied menu for those who could afford it, but without many ingredients we now think of as Egyptian.

There were no tomatoes, potatoes, chillies or citrus fruit, which came from the Americas or Asia much later, and no cane sugar. Some foods carried taboos: certain priests avoided fish, for example, and pork was shunned in some places and periods.

What did the rich eat at banquets?

Roast beef and fowl, bread, cakes, fruit, beer and plenty of wine, served by attendants while musicians, singers and dancers performed, if the tomb paintings are a guide. Guests sit on chairs or cushions holding lotus flowers, women and men sometimes separately, while servants pour drinks and hand round collars of flowers. Some scenes even show a guest who has had too much.

Old Kingdom tombs at Saqqara show the food supply behind the feast: herds of cattle, geese being fattened by hand, fishermen hauling nets and bakers at their ovens. In Tutankhamun's tomb, dozens of wooden boxes held prepared joints of meat and poultry, embalmed and wrapped so the king would never go hungry. The long offering lists carved in tombs, naming bread, beer, oxen, fowl, alabaster and linen in their thousands, were meant to keep the dead fed for eternity.

Which modern Egyptian foods have ancient roots?

Several staples are ancient in their ingredients, though not necessarily in their recipes: fava beans, lentils, onions, flatbread and salted fish were all eaten by the pharaohs' subjects.

• Fava beans: have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, and slow-cooked beans are still breakfast across Egypt; see our guide to ful medames.
• Salted fish: the fermented grey mullet called fiseekh is eaten at the spring festival of Sham el-Nessim, a holiday often said to go back to pharaonic times.
• Lentils and onions: lentil soup and the onion-heavy dishes of the Egyptian kitchen use the same crops seen in tomb scenes.

Be wary of anyone selling a dish as an exact pharaonic recipe: no ancient cookbook survives, and most modern dishes took shape over the last few centuries.

Where to see ancient food and drink in Egypt today

The painted private tombs of Luxor and the carved mastabas of Saqqara are the best places to see food produced, cooked and served.

• The Tombs of the Nobles, Luxor: Nakht's grape harvest and banquet with musicians, Menna's harvest scenes, and Rekhmire's kitchens and storerooms.
• Deir el-Medina, Luxor: the tomb of Sennedjem, where he and his wife reap grain in the afterlife's Field of Reeds.
• Saqqara: the mastaba of Ti and the tomb of Mereruka, with farming, fishing, butchery and baking.
• The Grand Egyptian Museum: Tutankhamun's food boxes, baskets of seeds and fruit, and wine jars; ask your guide which are on display, as galleries can change.

To taste the modern descendants, a food tour or cooking class in Cairo or Luxor is the easiest way; our cooking class guide has the options.