November 11, 2018

Food

The Aksumites would doubtless have served their food in some of their large range of pottery vessels, after preparing it in the coarse-ware cooking vessels on open fires, in ovens or on charcoal-fed stoves. Much of their diet would have consisted of products of the local environment. Beef or mutton, bread, beer (sewa), honey wine or mead (tej), with various sorts of vegetables and fruits are to be expected locally, while imported wines of Laodicea and Italy, spices, and olive oil added to the luxury of the tables of the richer citizens. Archaeological evidence for the importation of wines and oils is supplied by the amphorae used to transport them; Paribeni even suggested that tar found in one amphora may have been used as a preservative, as in Greek resinated wines. It is unknown whether the Aksumites themselves cultivated the vine. Honey may have been used as a sweetener as well as a drink. Many of these foodstuffs are mentioned by the Safra inscription (Drewes 1962: 41, 48-9) or by the Periplus (Huntingford 1980: 22).

From the numerous medium-sized bowls found, it may be deduced that a part of the diet consisted of something like a cereal porridge or gruel. Wheat or barley-cakes and bread were also probably made, and the importance of the grain is illustrated by its depiction in a prominent position as a frame for the king’s head on many Aksumite coins. Large numbers of grindstones testify to the preparation of flour for bread at, for example, Matara and Adulis. Anfray (1974: 752) noted that they are of the round, turning, type at Adulis, but oblong on the plateau sites. Anfray (1963: pl. CXLVI and 1965: pl. LXXIII, 4) also mentions small mortars from the pre-Aksumite period, perhaps for use in the preparation of cosmetics rather than food. Dairy products would certainly have been part of the diet, and doubtless, eggs were eaten. For meat, there was beef or mutton, and also any wild animals which might have been considered edible. By one hearth in Adulis, the French excavator Francis Anfray found a cooking-pot still containing the mutton bones of a meal never cleared away (Anfray 1974: 753). The pork was not eaten in later times and possibly this abstention, observed by the Jews and Muslims as well as the Orthodox Ethiopians for practical health reasons, was of early origin as domestic pigs are not attested. Dietary prohibitions are later reiterated in the Kebra Nagast (Budge 1922: 159).

Fishing may have been practised. The turtles which produced the `tortoise-shell’ may also have added to the coastal Aksumites’ diet, though creatures without fins and scales are among those included in the later list of prohibited foods. Those who brought the tortoise-shell to the market are referred to by the author of the Periplus as Ikhthuophagoi, or fish-eaters. The excavations at Adulis produced both fish-bones and bronze fish-hooks (Paribeni 1907: 483, 540). Shell-fish were also later prohibited, again possibly an old custom. No early visitor has said whether the Aksumites liked raw beef, cut from the living animal, as Bruce (1790) reported (to the horrified disbelief of his eighteenth century English readers) about the Ethiopians of his day.

Almost certainly some foodstuffs would have been eaten from wooden or basketwork vessels (the typical Ethiopian `table’ today, the mesob, is of basketwork). Wooden cooking or eating utensils, and basketwork storage bins can also be presumed with some likelihood. In the lowest building level at the Maryam Tseyon site in Aksum, an exceptional find was a row of large pithoi or storage pots, probably for bulk storage of some sort of dry grain (de Contenson 1963i: pl. XII).