In Egypt it has a tradition of being added to bread, mixed with the fl our of sorghum in particular . A popular dish in Yemen is “hulbah,” which is made from pounded fenugreek mixed with meat broth and various vegetables . Fenugreek is often eaten with white lupine , which is already mentioned by Galen . The seeds are also used for making fenugreek tea , which is still served in Egypt. Medical treatments include promoting lactation; healing inflammations; regulating digestion; relieving coughs, asthma, and emphysema; and its use as an aphrodisiac . Duke states that in Punjab , whole plants are added to stored grains as insect repellents and that seeds are used locally for a yellow dye. It is not known if this was also practiced in ancient Egypt. During a botanical field trip, a sample of fenugreek seeds was found by the author among the belongings of a dead Ababda sheikh, who was buried on a terrace of Wadi Shenshef near the Roman ruins . The author discovered these belongings high up between the branches of an Acacia tree, well safeguarded against incidental water currents. I visited the tree again the following day with some Ababda nomads who allowed me to inspect part of the find, including a tin that appeared to contain an almost-empty packet of Nefertiti cigarettes, indicating that the belongings must have been deposited in the tree at least ten years earlier. Also present were three boxes of matches, an illegible piece of paper, a small medicine bottle, plastic pot manufacturers and two tied-up pieces of cloth in the form of a purse. The fenugreek seeds were present in one of these purses; the other one contained seven topped cowrie shells.
These shells could be used by gifted people for fortune-telling and for consulting to plot out a proper route during a journey. It could not be determined whether the fenugreek seeds were used as a spice or as a medicine. The archaeobotanical records of fenugreek are scattered and include Spain, Bulgaria, Germany, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and India. The oldest finds originate from Iraq , Israel , and Jordan . Archaeobotanical records from Egypt almost equalize the number of all other finds, the oldest one originating from predynastic Ma’adi . In Berenike, fenugreek might have been cultivated in locally constructed garden plots. It is adapted to sandy soils and can even withstand some salinity. Seeds can be harvested about three to five months after planting. Alternatively, the seeds could have been imported from the Nile Valley.The general picture from the Egyptian archaeobotanical record is that the hulled emmer wheat predominated during the pharaonic period and was largely replaced by free-threshing wheat during the Ptolemaic period. A reexamination of the published records revealed that we are predominantly dealing with hard wheat in the GrecoRoman period, and not with bread wheat . Both free-threshing wheats can easily be distinguished by their threshing remains, whereas the identification of fruits can be problematic . Although hard wheat is well adapted to relatively warm climates, and for that reason is the dominant wheat in the Near East and the Mediterranean area, it has quite recently been replaced in Egypt by bread wheat on a large scale. The cultivation of hard wheat is now confined to small areas in the Delta and the Fayum. Nevertheless, a new variety of hard wheat has recently been brought into cultivation. The yield of durum wheat is larger than that of emmer wheat, but less than that of bread wheat. The name hard wheat refers to the very hard endosperm, which makes it unsuitable for bread making. After grinding, the gluten-rich flour is made into a stiff, unleavened dough that is used for all kinds of pastas, such as spaghetti, noodles, and macaroni. The identification of the Berenike specimens is based on the morphological features of the rachis fragments .
It appeared that almost all the rachis nodes unearthed belong to durum wheat. Only a few spikelets of emmer wheat and some rachis fragments of bread wheat were found. Both species were always found mixed up with the predominant durum wheat and are therefore considered as contaminants. Durum wheat has been recorded in reasonable quantities in both early and late Roman deposits of Berenike and would have been one of the staple grains for human consumption. Most probably, the hard wheat was obtained from the productive Nile Valley. The delivery of mainly modest quantities of wheat from Koptos to Berenike is evidenced by an ostraka archive found at Koptos, dated from 18 BC to AD 69 .The bitter vetch is a pulse crop native to the Near East and the Mediterranean area. Also from Egypt, it has been recorded as a wild plant species, where it grows on cultivated grounds in the Mediterranean coastal area . From this area it moved westward to the Balkan area and to the countries along the Mediterranean Sea, where it has been recorded from many Neolithic sites. Records from Egypt date back as far as predynastic times . The bitter vetch belongs to the first group of domesticated crops of the Fertile Crescent and central Anatolia, although it is considered of less importance than the lentil or the pea . Seeds of the bitter vetch can be eaten by ruminants such as cows and sheep and by birds such as chickens, but they are toxic for other animals such as donkeys, horses, and pigs. The seeds are only fit for human consumption if they are soaked in water for some time. According to Zohary and Hopf , bitter vetch was mainly used as forage for animals, at least from Roman times onward and was only eaten by man in times of famine. Originally a weed in lentil fields, the bitter vetch is still difficult to eliminate once it has become established in such fields.
The correlation between the bitter vetch and the lentil in samples from Berenike and Shenshef is weak and assumes that the bitter vetch had been purposely brought to the site. Considering the availability of a broad spectrum of high-quality food products in both these sites, the bitter vetch was probably imported as animal fodder from the Nile Valley. According to Becker-Dillingen , seeds of the bitter vetch have also been used to adulterate black pepper , but such a practice at Berenike is not conceivable.The wild ancestor of the fava bean has not yet been identified and the archaeological evidence from early Neolithic settlements is also still scanty. For these reasons the fava bean is not considered as one of the founder crops of early agriculture . The oldest finds are recorded from the Levant, from where the crop spread westward into the Mediterranean area and eastward into India and China. The oldest Egyptian archaeobotanical find, unequivocally identified to the level of species, is dated to the Old Kingdom and originates from Abusir . Today, the fava bean belongs to the most important food legumes produced in Egypt . The fruits have a white and velvet coating on the inside and contain some 3 to 6 seeds. Dry beans have a protein content of about 25 percent, black plastic plant pots wholesale which is comparable with that of the pea . Fava beans are grown for both green and dry consumption. If consumed as immature green beans, the plants are harvested several times. To obtain dry beans, the whole plant is harvested as soon as the first fruits turn black. Green beans are eaten after boiling, whereas dried beans are often baked first, a meal that is called foul midamis . Taamiah is a fried ball of paste made of germinated fava beans, and is a popular snack in Egypt. In the eastern Mediterranean, a part of the human population is hypersensitive to the consumption of fava beans, which can cause a condition known as favism. Pollen may also bring on this disease, and it is probably for this reason that Pythagoras advised against eating flowers of this plant . A variety of chemical compounds is responsible for the oxidation of red blood corpuscles and hemoglobin, resulting in anemia and jaundice . Unless they are stored in a cool environment, harvested beans will quickly deteriorate. This may explain why the fava bean was frequently found among crops cultivated in the small kitchen gardens present in settlements in the Eastern Desert. Obviously, this pulse is easily grown under controlled conditions, and it is most likely that it was also cultivated in local kitchen gardens in Roman Berenike and Shenshef. Such plants might concern special garden cultivars, which are distinguished from field cultivars. The garden cultivars are especially grown on a small scale throughout Africa, Southeast Asia, and parts of India for its green pods . The green pods can be harvested for human consumption, and the remaining plant parts are suitable for use as stock feed. Despite their relatively thick seed coat, only a few small fragments of the fava-bean seeds have been unearthed in Berenike and Shenshef, indicating that their presence in the archaeobotanical records is probably underrepresented. This could be explained in several ways. First, large seeds will have less chance of getting lost in the sieving process in food preparation. This is in line with the predominance of small, aborted fava-bean seeds frequently found in waterlogged samples from The Netherlands. In addition, it may be assumed that if large seeds do indeed get lost, they have a better chance of being eaten by browsing animals than smaller ones such as lentils that will easily sink down in the trash. Furthermore, large seeds of pulses easily disintegrate and, in this state, are easily susceptible to further organic decay.
As only seed fragments were found, it was not possible to measure the size of the seeds, which would enable an identification to the level of variety.The mung bean is a domesticate of the Indian subcontinent. Its wild progenitor, Vigna radiata ssp. sublobata , is found in the western Himalayan foothills and extends throughout the Western Ghats into Sri Lanka. Apart from the discovery of the mung bean in Roman Berenike, the only other archaeobotanical records so far originate from India and date at least to the start of the second millennium BC . Together with black gram , the mung bean is highly valued, the former being particularly prized by high-caste orthodox Hindus . Today, the mung bean is mainly produced in Southeast Asia, including India. According to Westphal , the mung bean has been introduced relatively late in East Africa and is still not fully accepted there as a pulse crop. Mung beans are grown primarily for their dried pulses. They can be eaten whole, split into dhal, or ground into fl our. Whole or split seeds are eaten after boiling, and the fl our of mung beans can be used for all kinds of baking products. Additionally, germinated bean sprouts are eaten, which are obtained from the green-colored seeds. Their protein content is well over 25 percent. Almost 70 mung beans have been unearthed from several loci in two trenches, located in the northwest part of the center of Berenike. They were traded as whole seeds. sub-fossil mung beans from India that coincide with the Roman trade with India have been recorded from Narhan and Taradih , both located in north India, and from Nevasa , east of Bombay . This would suggest the import of mung beans from Barygaza. On the other hand, it has to be realized that the Indian archaeobotanical record is still biased in favor of prehistorical sites found in the southern part of India. Prehistorical finds of the mung bean are recorded from Hallur and Sangankallu in Karnataka . Assuming a continuation of the mung bean cultivation, this means that import from the more-southerly ports of Muziris and Nelkynda must also come into consideration.The progenitor of the cultivated grape is Vitis vinifera ssp. sylvestris, which grows in the Mediterranean area and eastward to Turkmenistan and Tadzhikistan where isolated populations are present. As far as the North African Mediterranean coastal strip is concerned, the distribution of this wild grape is confined to Morocco and Algeria. Grape cultivation started in the Levant in the early Bronze Age, making it one of the first classical fruits of the Old World .