Chapter 4

### 3. Ancient Egyptian Diet — A Harsh Test of Life and Death!

Alright, no matter how painful the process, now that the clothes are off, the hair and body hair are shaved, what other tests are waiting for everyone?

Well, you still need a set of sturdy and durable iron teeth and a similarly strong and durable steel gut.

Huh? Is the dietary culture of ancient Egypt that tragic?

Not exactly. In fact, the Egyptians were very good at enjoying life. Thanks to the fertile agricultural products of the Nile Valley, when the Greeks and Romans were still eating raw meat and blood, the Egyptians already had bread, and it was even a high-end sweet bread mixed with butter, honey, and spices.

Beer was another staple of the Egyptians—unlike modern beer, which produces many bubbles, ancient Egyptian beer was more viscous and contained many solid substances, making it highly nutritious, more like modern porridge (add a bit more honey and it becomes sweet rice wine).

In addition to bread and beer, which were basic necessities for everyone, the ancient Egyptians also invented cakes with dates and honey, as well as wine as a high-end beverage. In ancient Egypt, the cheapest vegetables were onions and garlic, which were generally much cheaper than bread, and even slaves could often eat them, sometimes using onions as their main food. Freshwater fish caught by fishermen from the Nile were also an important source of protein for the Egyptians. As for various meats, especially beef, they were relatively expensive, and the poor generally couldn't afford them.

Moreover, at the luxurious banquets of the ancient Egyptian nobility, one could see roasted whole cows, roasted ducks, roasted geese, roasted pigeons, roasted pork chops, roasted fish, thick soups, mixed vegetables, raisins, dried dates, and fruit platters. Essentially, the basic dishes of Western cuisine that we see today can all find their prototypes in ancient Egypt.

Unfortunately, the ancient Egyptians invented dishes but not utensils, so time travelers would have to eat with their fingers, much like modern Indians. By the time the earliest utensils were brought to the Nile by the Persians and Greeks, traditional ancient Egypt was already nearing its end.

Even more unfortunately, although the food and drink invented by the ancient Egyptians were very exquisite and nutritionally rich, the sandstorms in Egypt meant that sand would inevitably fall into the food during cooking, and no matter how much they tried, they couldn't clean it out.

Bread, the staple food of the Egyptians, was especially harmful to health due to the rough conditions of baking—bread samples extracted from ancient Egyptian tombs show that they contained many impurities, including a large amount of sand, fragments from hand mills used to grind flour, and debris from storage areas...

Although the Egyptians successfully turned bread baking into a craft, creating over fifty different shapes of bread—round, cubic, braided, animal-shaped—they couldn't get the sand out of the bread.

The hard quartz sand would wear down the enamel on the Egyptians' teeth, causing cavities and leading to the decay of the tooth nerves. In the worst cases, it could even trigger sepsis and lead to death—the famous Pharaoh Ramses II died from tooth decay.

Not only was the food in ancient Egypt unhealthy, but the water was also problematic—everyone knows that the Egyptians relied on the Nile for drinking water. The Nile water in Upper Egypt was relatively clear and suitable for drinking. However, in the Delta region of Lower Egypt, especially near the river mouth, the water flow slowed down significantly, and the river was full of muddy, turbid water. The wealthy people living in the Nile Delta would usually pour this turbid water into pools to let it settle, then use the clear water on top, which was barely acceptable. However, the poor couldn't be so particular and had to hold their noses and drink the dirty water, and there was no concept of boiling water before drinking it... As a result, various intestinal parasitic diseases were rampant.

Therefore, with the delicate digestive systems of modern people, it would be very difficult to adapt to the poor diet of ancient Egypt.

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