Thoth at the table

The ancient Egyptian meal does not divide into starter-main-dessert: it is organized around a foundational pair, bread (t) and beer (henqet), so essential that they also served as wages and offerings to the gods. Around this base gravitate vegetables (onion, garlic, leek, fava beans, lentils), sweet fruits (dates, figs), Nile fish and poultry, and honey for feast days. At the table of a temple like that of Thoth, the offering placed on the altar in the morning would later descend to the priests: one literally ate what the god had first received.

Honey, harvested from the hives of the Delta, was the sweet gold of the Egyptians — a symbol of Lower Egypt and the only noble sweetener before sugar. It is paired with tiger nut (chufa, Cyperus esculentus), a small tuber with a hazelnut flavor ubiquitous in funerary offerings: together they give Thoth's cuisine its golden sweetness, attested from New Kingdom tomb scenes.