Epigraphic evidence for a ‘Porridge-and-Pot’ tradition on the ancient Middle Nile

Abstract

Recent scholarship by Randi Haaland and David Edwards has argued that a culinary tradition of ‘Porridge-and-Pot’ distinguished ancient Sahelian Africa from the ‘Bread-and-Oven’ world of Egypt and the Near East. The evidence published thus far in support of this hypothesis has been predominately ethnographic, archaeological and iconographic. This paper introduces hitherto unpublished epigraphic evidence from a lapidary inscription at the ancient Nubian town of Sanam on the Middle Nile. When submitted to lexicographic and linguistic analysis, the inscription provides further support for Haaland and Edwards's hypothesis and simultaneously proposes a new reading of an enigmatic culinary epithet found in several ancient literary papyri. The resulting combination of methods extends the case for a ‘Porridge-and-Pot’ tradition in a new direction by demonstrating that the culinary contrast between Sahelian and Mediterranean Africa was explicitly invoked during the first millennium BC as a marker of social identity.