FOOD AND DRINK IN ANCIENT WORLD - 1
ISRAEL, CHINA, INDIA AND EGYPT
In the book of Deuteronomy, the Israelites are given the following specific instructions from God, through Moses, about the foods that they may and may not eat. Don’t eat any disgusting animals. You may eat the meat of cattle, sheep, and goats; wild sheep and goats and gazelles, antelopes and all kinds of deer. It is all right to eat meat from any animals that have divided hoofs and also chew the cud.
But don’t eat camels, rabbits, and rock badgers. These animals chew the cud but do not have divided hoofs. You must treat them as unclean. And don’t eat pork, since pigs have divided hoofs, but they do not chew their cud. Don’t even touch a dead pig! You can eat any fish that has fins and scales. But there are other creatures that live in the water, and if they do not have fins and scales, you must not eat them. Treat them as unclean.
You can eat any clean bird. But don’t eat the meat of any of the following birds: eagles, vultures, falcons, kites, ravens, ostriches, cormorants, storks, herons, and hoopoes. You must not eat bats. Swarming insects are unclean, so don’t eat them. However, you are allowed to eat certain kinds of winged insects. You belong to the LORD your God, so if you happen to find a dead animal, don’t eat its meat. You may give it to foreigners who live in your town or sell it to foreigners who are visiting your town. Don’t boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
(Source: Scripture taken from The Holy Bible: Contemporary English Version. © 1995 by American Bible Society).
The first-century A.D. Jewish historian Josephus relates in the following passage how God, through Moses, met the Hebrews’ need for food and water on their exodus from Egypt. God thereon promised to take care of them and to provide the resources which they craved. Having received this response from God, Moses descended to the multitude.
And they, on seeing him all radiant at the divine promises, passed from dejection to a more optimistic mood, while he, standing in their midst, told them that he had come to bring them from God deliverance from their present predicament. And not long after that, a flock of quails—a species of bird abundant, above all others, in the Arabian gulf—came flying over this stretch of sea, and, both tired from their flight and accustomed more than other birds to skim the ground, settled in the Hebrews’ camp. And they, collecting them as the food provided for them by God, satisfied their hunger, while Moses addressed his thankful prayers to God . . . Immediately after this first supply of food, God sent down to them a second. While Moses raised his hands in prayer, a dew descended and, as this congealed about his hands, Moses, surmising that this too was a nutriment come to them from God, tasted it and was delighted. The multitude, in their ignorance, took this for snow and attributed the phenomenon to the season of the year, but he instructed them that this heaven descending dew was not as they supposed, but was sent for their salvation and sustenance, and tasting it, he ordered them thus to convince themselves. They, then, imitating their leader, were delighted with what they ate, for it had the sweet and delicious taste of honey . . . and they fell to collecting it with the greatest enthusiasm. Orders, however, were issued to all to collect each day [a moderate amount], since this food would never fail them. This was to ensure that the weak would not be prevented from obtaining some, should their stronger brethren use their strength to amass a larger harvest . . . It is a mainstay to dwellers in these parts against their dearth of other provisions, and to this very day all that region is watered by a rain like to that which them, as a favor to Moses, the Deity sent down for human’s sustenance. The Hebrews call this food manna . . . So they continued to rejoice in their heaven-sent gift, living on this food for forty years, all the time they were in the desert.
Upon their departure, when they reached Raphidin, in extreme agony from thirst— for having on the earlier days found some scanty springs, they then found themselves in an absolutely waterless region—they were in great distress and again vented their anger on Moses. But he, shunning for a while the onset of the crowd, began to pray, beseeching God, as He had given meat to them in their need, so now to provide drink for them, for their gratitude for the meat would perish if there were nothing to drink. Nor did God long defer this gift, but promised Moses that He would provide a spring with abundant water where they had not looked for it. He then ordered him to strike with his staff the rock which stood there before their eyes, and from it, they would receive a plenteous supply of what they needed. Moreover, He would see to it that this water would appear for them without work or effort.
Having received this response from God, Moses now approached the people . . . When he arrived, he told them that God would deliver them from this distress, and had even promised to save them in an unexpected way: a river was to flow for them out of the rock. They were very distraught at this news, aghast at the thought of being forced, exhausted as they were with thirst and travel, to split the rock. But Moses struck it with his staff, whereupon it opened and there gushed out an abundant stream of the clearest water. Amazed at this marvelous occurrence, the mere sight of which already quenched their thirst, they drank and found the current sweet and delicious and all that was to be looked for in a gift from God.
(Source: Josephus. Volume IV. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1930).
3. A Cook Who Took Care of His Carving Knife
Laozi may have been a philosopher, or perhaps the word Laozi is a generic term for a consortium of philosophers, who flourished perhaps around the fourth century B.C. in China. In any event, the teachings of Laozi include the following story of a cook named Ding, and the way in which he performed his duties. Your life has a limit, but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger. If you understand this and still strive for knowledge, you will be in danger for certain! If you do good, stay away from fame. If you do evil, stay away from punishments. Follow the middle, go by what is constant, and you can stay in one piece, keep yourself alive, look after your parents, and live out your years.
Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord Wenhui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee—zip, zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm . . . “Ah, this is marvelous!” said Lord Wenhui. “Imagine skill reaching such heights!” Cook Ding laid down his knife and replied: “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself.
After three years, I no longer saw the whole ox. And now—now I go at it by spirit, and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.
“A good cook changes his knife once a year—because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month—because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for 19 years, and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room, more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s why after 19 years, the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.
“However, when I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until—flop! The whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.” “Excellent!” said Lord Wenhui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ding and learned how to care for life!”
(Source: From Sources of Chinese Tradition. Volume I. Second edition. Compiled by William Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom. Copyright © 1999 Columbia University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher).
4. Do Not Eat Meat
In this passage from the Lankavatara Sutra, a Buddhist religious text from perhaps the fourth century B.C., the bodhisattva, or disciple of Buddha, is cautioned not to eat meat. Here in this long journey of birth-and-death, there is no living being who . . . has not at some time been your mother or father, brother or sister, son or daughter . . . So how can the bodhisattva, who wishes to treat all beings as though they were himself, . . . eat the flesh of any living being . . . Therefore, wherever living beings evolve, people should feel toward them as to their own kin, and, looking on all beings as their only child, should refrain from eating meat . . .
The bodhisattva . . . desirous of cultivating the virtue of love, should not eat meat, in order that he does not cause terror to living beings. Dogs, when they see, even at a distance, an outcaste . . . who likes eating meat, are terrified with fear, and think, “They are the dealers of death, they will kill us!” Even the tiny animals in earth and air and water, who have a very keen sense of smell, will detect at a distance the odor of the demons in meat-eaters, and will run away as fast as they can from the death which threatens them . . .
Moreover, the meat-eater sleeps in sorrow and wakes in sorrow. All his dreams are nightmares, and they make his hair stand on end . . . Things other than human sap his vitality. Often he is struck with terror, and trembles without cause . . . He knows no measure in his eating, and there is no flavor, digestibility, or nourishment in his food. His bowels are filled with worms and other creatures, which are the cause of leprosy. And he ceases to think of resisting diseases . . .
It is not true . . . that meat is right and proper for the disciple when the animal was not killed by himself or by his orders, and when it was not killed specially for him . . . Pressed by a desire for the taste of meat, people may string together their sophistries in defense of meat-eating . . . and declare that the Lord permitted meat as legitimate food, that it occurs in the list of permitted foods, and that he himself ate it. But . . . it is nowhere allowed in the sutras as a . . . legitimate food . . . All meat-eating in any form or manner and in any circumstances is prohibited, unconditionally, once and for all.
(Source: From Sources of Indian Tradition. Volume I. Edited by William Theodore de Bary. Copyright © 1958 Columbia University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher).
5. The Staples of the Egyptian Diet According to Herodotus
In the following passage from his Histories, the fifth-century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus comments on Egyptian cuisine. [The Egyptians are] . . . next to the Libyans, the healthiest people in the world. I should put this down myself to the absence of changes in climate; for change, and especially change of weather, is the prime cause of disease. They eat loaves made from spelt—cyllestes is their word for them—and drink a wine made from barley, as they have no vines in their country. Some kinds of fish they eat raw, either dried in the sun, or salted; quails, too, they eat raw, and ducks and various small birds, after pickling them in brine. Other sorts of birds and fish, apart from those which they consider sacred, they either roast or boil.
Source: Herodotus: The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1954. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
6. The Staples of the Egyptian Diet According to Plutarch
In this excerpt from his long essay on the Egyptian deities Isis and Osiris, the Greek biographer and essayist Plutarch (A.D. c. 45–c. 120) discusses Egyptian dietary habits.
As for sea fish, all Egyptians do not abstain from all of them, but from some kinds only. For example, the inhabitants of Oxyrhynchus abstain from those that are caught with a hook; for inasmuch as they revere the fish called oxyrhynchus (the pike), they are afraid that the hook may be unclean, since a pike may have been caught with it. The people of Syene abstain from the phagrus (the sea bream), because this fish is reputed to appear with the oncoming of the Nile, and to be a self-sent messenger which, when it is seen, declares to a glad people the rise of the river.
The priests, however, abstain from all fish. And on the ninth day of the first month, when every one of the other Egyptians eats a broiled fish in front of the outer door of his house, the priests do not even taste the fish, but burn them up in front of their doors. For this practice, they have two reasons, one of which is religious and curious, and I will discuss it at another time . . . The other is obvious and commonplace, in that it declares that fish is an unnecessary and superfluous food, and confirms the words of Homer who, in his poetry, represents neither the Phaeacians, who lived amid a refined luxury, nor the Ithacans, who lived on an island, as making any use of fish, nor did even the companions of Odysseus, while on such a long voyage and in the midst of the sea, until they had come to the extremity of want. In sum, these people consider the sea to be derived from infected matter, and to lie outside the confines of the world and not to be a part of it or an element, but a corrupt and pestilential residuum of a foreign nature . . . The priests keep themselves clear of the onion and hate it and are careful to avoid it, because it is the only plant that naturally thrives and flourishes in the waning of the moon. It is suitable neither for fasting nor festival, because in the one case, it causes thirst, and in the other, tears for those who eat it. In like manner, they consider the pig to be an unclean animal, because it is reputed to be most inclined to mate in the waning The Greek researcher and storyteller Herodotus of Halicarnassus (fifth century b.c.) was said to be the world’s first historian. Library of Congress. of the moon, and because the bodies of those who drink its milk break out with leprosy and scabrous itching.
(Source: Plutarch’s Moralia. Volume V. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1936.)
7. Royal Repasts
According to the flowing excerpt from the writings of the first-century B.C. Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, Egyptian kings, like Egyptian priests, had a restricted diet. It was the custom for kings to eat delicate food, eating no other meat than veal and duck, and drinking only a prescribed amount of wine, which was not enough to make them unreasonably full or drunken. And, speaking generally, their whole diet was ordered with such moderation that it had the appearance of having been drawn up, not by a lawgiver, but by the most skilled of their physicians, with only their health in view.
(Source: Diodorus of Sicily. Volume I. Translated by C. H. Oldfather. London and Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1933.)
8. Pumpkin Purveyors Prevent Me from Paying My Taxes
(Source: Select Papyri: Non-Literary Papyri; Public Documents. Volume II. Translated by A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1934)
See also: Greece and Rome
By David Matz (volume editor) in the book 'Daily Life Through World History in Primary Documents' Lawrence Morris, General Editor, Volume 1: The Ancient World, p.143-149, First published in 2009 by Greenwood Press,Westport, USA. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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