Horus at the table

In ancient Egypt, a meal is not served as starter-main-dessert, but an offering table, the hotep, is set. For a god like Horus, the priests daily place on the temple altar a ritual sequence: bread and beer first (the sacred formula pereT-kherou), then fowl or beef, sweet fruits (figs, dates, pomegranates), milk and honey. The same logic feeds the living: a base of bread and beer, vegetables from the silt (onion, garlic, lettuce), some fish or fowl on feast days, and the sweetness of the date palm to finish. Everything comes from the Nile and its black silt, the kemet.

Farro wheat (emmer, beded) is the queen cereal of Egypt: it provides bread and beer, the foundation of all cuisine. Wild honey and that from reed hives bring the only real sweetness of the time (sugar does not exist). Together, emmer bread and honey sign the Egyptian table, from peasant to falcon-god.