An Ancient Bakery Discovered
Discovery of an ancient bakery offers insights into the food eaten by Pyramid laborers. The discovery, made by George Washington University Egyptologist Dr. Mark Lehner and his team, revealed bread pots matching the pots depicted in hieroglyphics on the wall of a Fifth Dynasty tomb. A fellow Harvard researcher, Wilma Wetterstrom, analyzed some plant matter at the site, finding barley and emmer wheat, which would make a rather dense bread, so dense and course that the commoner would wear down the teeth from eating it. At the time of the pyramids, workshops, bakeries, and stores were mainly replicating methods used by Egyptian home cooks. Bakers baked the bread in a long, conical pot called a bedja. Archaeologists have been amazed at the amount of wood ash they’ve found at the bakeries. The amount of ash indicates that wood was a vital import at the time.