In pharaonic Egypt, there is no "starter-main course-dessert" but a logic of abundance spread across the offering table (hotep): bread and beer form the absolute foundation of every day, supplemented by onion, fish, and fruits of the Nile. At festivals, grilled meat and honey sweets are added. The same food nourishes the living at noon and the dead in the tomb — for what one eats, one also places before the dead so that they may survive in the afterlife that I guard.

The mother grain of ancient Egypt, emmer wheat is the backbone of the diet: ground and baked it gives bread (ta), fermented it gives beer (henqet). Every Egyptian meal stems from this rustic grain, long before modern soft wheat.