Choice Cuts: Meat Production in Ancient Egypt

Abstract

Choise cuts: Meat Production in Ancient Egypt is a book about all aspects of meat processing in ancient Egypt. The book lists and examines the different types of meat consumed by the Egyptians: poultry, fish, and mammal, and their immediate by-products, such as blood and fat. The author discusses how each type of animal was slaughtered and processed for either immediate consumption or stored for later use, using pictorial, artefactual, textual, woodarchaeological, ethnographic and experimental evidence. Slaughter, jointing, and general processing locations are discussed, as well as storage locations, vessels used for storage, and transportation of animals as well as processed meat products. The book concludes with an attempt to determine how much meat was consumed in ancient Egypt, by whom, and what type. The appendices include lists of scenes showing meat processing as well as pig farming. The book has grown out of Dr. Salime Ikram's dissertation at Cambridge University. She now teaches Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, and works on excavations in Egypt and Turkey. Her specialities are daily life (especially food production) and mummification in ancient Egypt, as well as focus on faunal analysis.