Latest / Ramses the Great: Egypt's Most Powerful Pharaoh — Fexingo History / Ramses the Great's Food and Feast: Feeding an Empire
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- Lucas: Luna, we've talked so much about Ramses the Great's monuments, his battles, his family — but I realised we've barely touched on the thing that actually made all of that possible: food. Luna: You mean like, what people actually ate? Lucas: Exactly. Because when you rule an empire for 67 years, you're not just managing temples and treaties — you're managing millions of mouths. And the engine behind it all was the annual flood of the Nile, what the Egyptians called Hapi. Every summer, the river rose and deposited rich silt across the floodplain. That single event determined whether the country prospered or starved. Luna: So Ramses' whole reign depended on whether the flood was good? Lucas: Pretty much. A low flood meant famine and social unrest. A high flood could wash away villages. But when it was just right — and during Ramses' time, the climate was generally favourable — the land produced staggering yields. Egypt was the breadbasket of the ancient Near East. They grew emmer wheat for bread and barley for beer, which was basically the national drink. Workers at Deir el-Medina, the village that built the royal tombs, received daily rations of about four loaves of bread and two jugs of beer. That was the baseline. Luna: Four loaves a day — that's a lot of baking. Lucas: It was an industry. At Per-Ramesses, the delta capital, there were enormous bakery complexes with rows of conical clay ovens. Archaeologists have found massive storage jars for grain — some could hold over a thousand litres. And the administration tracked every bushel. The 'Scribe of the Fields' kept meticulous records on papyrus: how much land was sown, what the yield was, how much went to the temple, how much to the palace, how much to the army. Luna: So Ramses used grain as a form of control? Lucas: Absolutely. Grain was currency. The state collected taxes in kind — a percentage of every farmer's harvest. That grain filled the royal granaries, which Ramses could then use to pay his soldiers — the Sherden mercenaries and the Medjay scouts — or to host diplomatic feasts. When the Hittite princess arrived for her marriage to Ramses, there would have been immense banquets. We have records of feasts at the Ramesseum, his mortuary temple, where hundreds of oxen, geese, and antelope were sacrificed and then eaten. Luna: Wait — antelope? That's not typical farm animal. Lucas: No, but the royal hunting grounds in the desert supplied game. And the Nile itself was a supermarket: tilapia, catfish, mullet were caught in huge quantities, then dried or salted. The poor ate fish all the time. The rich had beef, lamb, and goose, along with vegetables like leeks, onions, garlic, and lettuce. And of course, honey was the main sweetener — Egypt was famous for its beekeeping. Luna: What about wine? I know they had vineyards in the Delta. Lucas: Yes, wine was a luxury. Ramses had royal vineyards in the eastern Delta and near Thebes. The best vintages were labelled with the year and vineyard — just like modern labels. A jar from year 3 of Ramses might say 'wine of the estate of Amun' and the name of the vintner. And beer was the everyday drink for everyone, including children. It was thick, nutritious, and low alcohol — more like a porridge than modern beer. Luna: So the whole society ran on bread and beer. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why the grain stores were the most important buildings in the kingdom. The famous Famine Stela from a later period actually claims that a temple granary could feed a city for seven years. Ramses built massive silos at Per-Ramesses and at the Ramesseum. His son Khaemwaset, as high priest of Ptah, oversaw the feeding of the Apis bulls — those sacred animals were fattened on the best barley and their deaths triggered huge funerary feasts. Luna: I never thought about the logistics behind all those monuments. You need fed workers. Lucas: Exactly. A mason carving a colossus at Aswan needed a daily ration of bread, beer, and perhaps some dried fish. The thousands of workers at the Ramesseum construction site — they were fed from the palace kitchens. The Deir el-Medina records actually list menus for feast days: extra rations of meat, cakes, and a special type of bread called 'bes.' So food wasn't just fuel — it was a marker of status and a tool of royal generosity. Luna: And you mentioned feasts for the Hittites — what did they eat? Lucas: We have a text from a Hittite king describing a feast in Egypt: 'platters of goose, duck, and fish, and loaves of bread stacked high, and wine flowing like water.' The Hittites themselves brought their own culinary traditions — they were big on roasting meat on spits. So the diplomatic meals were probably a fusion. And Ramses would have made sure the best Egyptian ingredients were showcased: honey from the marshes, figs and dates from the oases, and pomegranates from the gardens. Luna: It sounds like the Egyptian diet was surprisingly varied. Lucas: It was, especially for the elite. But even for commoners, there was more than just bread and beer. The Nile provided fish, the fields provided vegetables, and the marshes provided birds and eggs. And every household had a small garden with onions, garlic, and herbs. The real difference was in meat: most people rarely ate it, while the temple and palace consumed vast quantities. The Apis bull cult alone meant that a few dozen bulls were sacrificed and eaten every year by the priests. Luna: So did Ramses ever suffer a famine? Lucas: There are records of a famine in his 8th year — a low Nile caused crop failures. The state granaries were used to distribute emergency rations. That's actually why the granaries were so huge: you needed to stockpile for bad years. And Ramses boasted on his stelae that he fed the people when the Nile failed. It was classic propaganda, but there's likely truth behind it — because if he hadn't, there would have been riots. Luna: It makes you realise that ruling Egypt was as much about agriculture as about armies. Lucas: Absolutely. And you know, this is the kind of show — the kind of deep dive into the everyday machinery of an ancient empire — that only exists because of listeners who value ad-free, detailed history. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, it's such a small thing that makes a huge difference for us. Lucas: Exactly. So back to the food — there's one more incredible detail. We actually have a papyrus, the 'Papyrus Harris I', that lists Ramses' donations to the temples. It includes millions of loaves of bread, thousands of jars of beer, and hundreds of thousands of cattle. The sheer scale is mind-boggling. And all of it depended on the silt, the sun, and the river Hapi. Luna: It really ties everything together — the power, the propaganda, the people. Lucas: Exactly. Ramses the Great wasn't just a builder and warrior — he was a master of logistics. And at the heart of it all was the daily miracle of the flood and the grain it produced.