Topic: Ancient Grain, AncientEgypt
I will have a tasty emmer salad recipe with heirloom tomatoes that I will post on Northwest Culinary Adventures next Tuesday, I hope you take a look.
One of the oldest grains known to be cultivated by man,
Emmer like all of its cousins is a wild grass, first collected and cooked as
porridge by early hunter-gathers.
Depending on your source, emmer is either the oldest
cultivated grain, or a close second to einkorn wheat. For the ancient Egyptians
it was their principal grain along with barley. Wild emmer has been found in
early archaeological sites dating back to the late Paleolithic Age around, 17,000BC.
Cultivated emmer emerged as the predominant wheat along
with barley as the principal cereals utilized by civilizations in the late
Mesolithic, and early Neolithic Ages 10,000 BC
(Helmqvist 1955; Harlan 1981; Zohary and Hopf 1993).
Emmer was the principal grain grown in Egypt, as well as
most of the ancient world, from the time it was just gathered as wild grain
until the introduction of naked wheat’s sometime after 10,000bc. Emmer continued
to be grain of choice until the Ptolemaic Period.
To the ancient Egyptians both emmer and barley were called
“corn”. There is even an ancient Egyptian grain god called Nepri (as I
mentioned in my last article on Kamut). Pictured in human form his body was
dotted to represent grains of corn.
As an ingredient in medicine emmer was use in bandages,
with salt and barley it helped stimulate childbirth and even helped to grow
hair! Emmer was also used in a remedy for a cough, constipation and to prevent
a woman from conceiving.
If that wasn’t enough, emmer was the principal grain was
used to make the staples of the Egyptian diet, bread and beer.
Bouza is a beer still made today as it was in Ancient
Egypt. Today this simple beer (only two ingredients are needed, wheat and
water) is probably made with modern wheat (Triticum aestivum) but in Egypt of
the past it was made with either emmer or barley.
Bread was made with emmer as the grain of choice (barley
for the common man), until modern wheat supplanted it. The Ancient Egyptians
made flat unleavened breads in the beginning but with the discovery of wild
yeast they made raised breads as well.
The Ancient Egyptian’s made over thirty different types of
bread as documented on the walls of tombs and temples.
Original Article
By Joanna Linsley-Poe
Coptright October 14, 2011
Photo of wild Emmer was taken at Omrit Israel 2009
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