[Sca-cooks] OT: Rome and medieval Egypt

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

This was sent, as part of a longer message, to the list on June 6, 2011 12:34 PM, but as far as i can tell, never showed up (and i'm not missing any digests). So i am cutting up the message and sending it in pieces.

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> Just had to pass on something I saw on the Atlantia list today.
> Rohesia Anven of Thessalonica was asking
>> I have recently been curious about Egyptian culture (mostly as it
>> would've related to the time of the Romans and earlier) but really in
>> any way it could relate to SCA timeline. I am having trouble finding
>> any resources for people who would like to create a persona or finding
>> someone who has an Egyptian persona. Ive tried some online searching
>> but to no avail. Anyone know of someone I can chat with about the
>> subject?
>
> One of the responses was:
>> Personally, I think dar Anahita is an excellent jumping off point
>> for anyone looking to learn more about Near Eastern cultures. It may
>> be past the timeframe you're most interested in, but Urtatim has an
>> amazing wealth of information on her site:
>> http://home.earthlink.net/~lilinah/directory.html
>> Molly
>
> Whoo Hoo, Urtatim!

Very kind of you, Stefan, and of Molly, although i have only very limited information about Egypt on my website.

As far as food goes, the nobility in Egypt in the Hellenic and classic Roman periods was largely of Greek descent, from General Ptolemy, so they would be eating ancient Greek-style food (Cleopatra, for example, was a Ptolemy). After the Romans took over completely, the ruling class and wealthy would be eating much like the noble and wealthy Romans back in Europe with Greek cooks who used Greek recipes. After all, much in the Apician cookbook is Greek in origin or inspiration. I have 20 recipes of Greco-Roman origin on my website.

Urtatim