Our Daily Bread E-Book

Predrag Matvejević

• Herausgeber: Istros Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 281

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Our Daily Bread charmingly weaves together the customs, rituals, anecdotes, legends and sayings that tell the story of bread, from Mesopotamia, through Egypt, to the Far East, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the New World. Matvejević shows how bread is depicted in literature and art (with beautiful illustrations) and examines especially closely the role of bread in the major world religions, drawing from the Bible, Talmud and Quran, but also at various apocryphal texts. In his seventh and last chapter, his narrative moves to the personal, explaining what motivated him to write this book; the lean years of his childhood during World War II and his father's detention in a German concentration camp. Warning about the pending threat of hunger in the "developed world," the book fittingly ends with a quote from the Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin: "The question of bread must take precedence over all other questions."

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title

I. Bread and the body

II. Trails and traces

III. Faith and beliefs

IV. Seven crusts

V. Seeds

VI. Images and semblances

VII. Afterword

The author and the translator

Praises for Our Daily Bread

Predrag Matvejević

Our Daily Bread

A meditation on the cultural and symbolic significance of bread throughout history

Translated from the Croatian by Christina Pribichevich-Zorić

First published in 2020 by Istros BooksLondon, United Kingdom www.istrosbooks.com

Copyright © The estate of Predrag Matvejević 2020

First published as Kruh naš by V.B.Z. Zagreb (2009)

The right of Predrag Matvejević, to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Translation © Christina Pribichevich-Zorić 2020

Cover design and typesetting: Davor Pukljak, www.frontispis.hr

Image on the cover: Detail from an illustration by Ephraim Moshe Lilien from Die Bücher der Bibel.The publishers would like to thank the generosity of the Wellcome Collection for making the images in this book freely available from their archive.

ISBN: 978-1-912545-11-7

This publication is made possible by the Croatian Ministry of Culture.

This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s “PEN Translates” programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas.www.englishpen.org

A man is holding a large basket with bread in it. Watercolour painting.Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

I. Bread and the body

Temple offering of wine, oil, flowers, cakes and bread. Credit: Carole Reeves. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Bread was born in ashes, on stone. It is older than books, and older than writing. Its first names are carved on clay tablets, in bygone languages. Part of its past is buried under ruins, along with its history, divided among countries and peoples. For the story of bread is rooted in the past and in history; it is connected to both, while identifying with neither.

Perhaps it was a brick that provided the first bread-maker with a model for the loaf. Earth and dough once sat side by side on the fire, on the far side of our collective memory.

No one knows when or where the first ear of grain sprouted, but its appearance must have attracted attention and aroused curiosity. The ordered distribution of the grains on the stem served as an example of harmony, measure, perhaps even equality, while the variety and quality of the various cereals revealed their differences, their virtues and probably also a hierarchy.

Traces of the first cereals can be found on several continents. In ancient times, they thrived in the plains of the “Fertile Crescent”, a region that spanned modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, the north-east and Nile Valley regions of Egypt, together with the south-eastern region of Turkey and the western fringes of Iran. Over the Euphrates shone a star called Anunit; over the Tigris it was the “Swallow star”. Their brilliance, it was believed, contributed to the fertility of Mesopotamia. Wheat grew in the Horn of Africa, between the Great Sea and the Sea of Reeds, near Aksum, Asmara, Addis Ababa. The desert ends in the plateaus of Ethiopia and Eritrea, where the climate is milder, the earth more fertile. Nearby is the source of the Blue Nile, which flows down to meet the other tributary of this wondrous river, the White Nile. The region enjoys an abundance of sunshine. “Bread is the fruit of the earth blessed by light,” says the German poet, Friedrich Hölderlin.

Perhaps it was to Egypt that cereals first came from the Middle East, but they followed other routes, as well. Carbonized seeds have been discovered in the western parts of the African desert, in fire pits more than 8,000 years old; here, too, somebody had once sown and reaped. Desert tribes from the Sahara, which once resembled the savannah, approached the Nile by trying to follow the riverbank. They found it criss-crossed with streams where nomads could quench their thirst and camels and gazelles could drink water. And so the Bedouins stopped in the oases, before continuing on their way. These journeys and stories, too, are older than history.

The origins of bread go back to the times when nomads became settlers, hunters became shepherds and both farmed. Some moved from hunting-ground to hunting-ground and from pasture to pasture; others cleared and worked the land: the vocation of Cain versus that of Abel. The nomadic life veered towards adventure, while the life of the settler required patience. Those wall drawings discovered in caves that were once used by nomads often depict long or broken lines that come from somewhere and lead somewhere else; moving from the unknown to the unknown. The drawings done by farmers, on the other hand, tend to be rounder, the spaces more delineated, with a discernible centre.

The sowing and reaping divided time into periods, the year into months, then into weeks and days. Routes shortened distances between places. Huts were built in the valleys, while denser dwelling areas were constructed by rivers. The digging of furrows changed the appearance of the fields, and allowed ears of grain to cover the land. The landscape changed from one generation to the next.

* * *

The Epic of Gilgamesh, written in cuneiform script around 1800 bce, mentions the bread eaten by the protagonist Enkidu, a skilled hunter who was accustomed to eat game. This mountain man who ate grass with the gazelles and sucked the milk of wild beasts, was surprised when he tasted bread for the first time. The journey from raw to cooked grain was a long one, and the man who made bread was different from his ancestors: He found himself standing on the threshold of history.

From the beginning of cultivation, the farmer had to keep his eye on the ploughed land, waiting for a yield. He scanned the sky, fearing for his crop, and he understood that the earth and the sky raised questions but offered no answers. As a result, different explanations and different belief systems came into being and spread. “Bread belongs to mythology,” said Hippocrates.

In the Garden of Eden, Eve picked the fateful apple and offered it to Adam, incurring God’s punishment: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.” The division of labour was dictated by necessity. The man worked in the field, the woman worked in the garden. He sowed and reaped, while she kneaded and baked. “Women sprinkled much white flour upon it – a meal for the labourers,” it says in the Iliad, while in the Odyssey the author underscores the difference between those who eat bread and those who eat lotuses – the loto­phagi or “barbarians” who couldn’t even speak properly. While some salted their meals and others refrained from it, both bread and salt were unknown to the Cyclops Polyphemus.

According to the Old Testament, Gideon’s defeat of the Midianites was inspired by a dream one of his soldiers had about barley bread: “he made unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour” – one of which tumbled down into the enemy camp. Pausanias also left to posterity the legend of the man who helped win the Battle of Marathon, midway between Athens and Karystos: “A man of rustic appearance and dress” charged at the overpowering Persians, brandishing his ploughshare, doubled over like a reaper. No one knew who he was or where he came from, not even the oracle of Delphi. When consulted, it merely responded with this sibylline message: “Honour Echetlaeus (he of the Plough-tail).” Pausanias then goes on to tell us that “a monument of white marble” was erected in his honour.

Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, sent a messenger to Thrasybulus in Miletus, asking for advice on how best to rule. Thrasybulus did not reply, but while speaking to the messenger in a wheat field, cut off all the tallest ears of wheat and threw them away. Hearing an account of the episode, Periander understood, followed the advice and killed the most prominent citizens of Corinth. According to the Book of Genesis, the pharaoh also dreamt of bread: “In my dream there were three baskets of white bread on my head” and “seven ears of corn, rank and good”, threatened by the thin and hollow ones. Joseph reminded the pharaoh that after abundance comes austerity, and he proposed building huge storehouses for the grain, to secure bread for the lean years.

And so we see the ear of grain and images of bread move from reality to dreams, and from dreams to reality, finding their place in the soul and in the body.

The prophet Isaiah foresaw a time when people “shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks”. But as we know, the heavens did not heed the prophet’s words. The earth turned a deaf ear and faith failed to disarm the warrior. The power structures gave more support to soldiers than to the sowers.

* * *

From time immemorial, parasites have been a threat to grain and flour, to bread and the human body that it nourishes. Their names have come to symbolize misfortune, trouble, dev­astation. Darnel, ryegrass and weeds are mentioned in the scriptures, as is mildew, a blight that is also referred to as rust or soot. Caterpillars and cockroaches plagued crops, rats and rodents infested granaries. We do not even know the names of some of these pests, but ants are not among them. Naturalists of the past, like Darwin, certainly paid them tribute. Everybody knows that an ant carries a load that is heavier than its own self, and those industrious insects have certainly taught us lessons, inspired comparisons and even metaphors: in order to survive, farmers were “as industrious as ants”; they gathered “like ants” in the field and on the threshing floor; and a good man wouldn’t step on an ant. Perhaps it is these very insects themselves that gave an example to people of how to gather and store grains for the coming days.

“The universe begins with bread,” Diogenes Laertius quotes Pytha­goras as saying. Preserved remains of grains and bread have been discovered next to sarcophagi and urns in graves, in pyramids, in places where one bid farewell to this life in the hope of a celestial, eternal life. There are also numerous vestiges and legends to show that separating the wheat from the chaff and weeds, the grain from the chaff and hay, the flour from bran and particles, the pure from the impure, are all age-old actions.

Bread is the product of both nature and culture. It was the condition for peace and the cause of war, the promise of hope and the reason for despair. Religions blessed it. People swore by it. Countries without enough bread experience discontent, but then again countries with nothing but bread do not fare much better, which calls to mind the adage, “One cannot live on bread alone” – a phrase that has echoed down through the centuries.

Food security, however, has always been an issue associated with bread. Century after century famine raged in various parts of the world, disturbing the natural connection between the body and bread. The Epic of Gilgamesh mentions the “seven years of drought” in Uruk, when not a grain was to be found in the husk. Both the Talmud and the Bible comment on the “seven lean cattle” and “seven lean years”. In the Old Testament, the First Book of Kings writes: “if there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust, or if there be caterpillar … whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be.” At the turn of the Middle Ages, the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea described crowds of people roaming around, emaciated and sallow-faced, so hungry that sometimes they ate each another.

Year 18 of the Hijri (640 ce) was proclaimed in Medina “the year of drought” – am al-ramad. During the reign of the Ikshidid, Islamicized Egypt also experienced periods of famine and misfortune, each worse than the last: in the years 341 and 343 of the Hijri (953 and 955 ce), and again in 352 and 360 of the same calendar (963 and 971 ce). Poor harvests were the consequence of many factors: the low water level of the Nile, conflicts between proprietors and slaves, corrupt scribes and clerks, the impoverishment of villagers and peasants, the revolt of the Bedouins and contagions that spread through cities and villages. An Arabic record noted that there were so many bodies they didn’t even manage to bury them all. According to the writings of Ibn Said, inhabitants of the desert even mixed crushed bones with their bread flour. During the reign of Al Mustansir Billah (1029–94 ce), the famine lasted a full seven years.

The fateful number seven is often associated with similar disasters.

Famine continued to decimate the population under the rule of sultan Al Nasir Muhammad bin Qalawun, in the eighth century of the Hijri (thirteenth/fourteenth century CE). Historians have recorded that every bakery had four guards to protect the millers and bakers. They carried clubs and were ready to stop anyone from stealing grain and flour. Matters got even worse under the sultanate of Al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh (1412–21 ce), when almost half the population died of starvation. It was during this time that bread was given names of ill omen such as hubz al-kurud (“monkey bread”), hubz al kalb (“dog bread”) and hubz al dub (“bear bread”). If you wanted to help or save the life of a friend or a guest, you would give them a “guarantee loaf” – raghifu emani.

Even today, in Egypt the Arabic and Coptic word aysh means both bread and life – the body that immortalizes life.

An integral part of our civilization, the knowledge of grain and bread was something to be passed down from generation to generation along with the tools and instruments people bequeathed to their progeny, that had a familiarity in appearance or in purpose. The “crib” for kneading dough looks like a baby’s cradle, like the bed in which we sleep, like the coffin in which our bodies will lie, like the boat that will take us from one shore to the other. Sieves and sifters, colanders and strainer nets are all related. These tools and accessories evolved over long, uncertain periods of time: from tinder and fire to hearths and ovens; from blade stones to forged knives; from deer horns, perhaps first used to loosen virgin soil, to ploughshares and real ploughs; from mortar and pestle to millstones powered by water or wind, or by slaves and donkeys. These tools, each according to its nature and purpose, marked the passing of time and the history of bread. And with them came amphoras, sacks and baskets to carry and transport the grain and flour. And once it was prepared, the stone or brick oven produced dough in its final form – bread that could be served at the table, offered at feasts, blessed at the altar, begged for in the street or stolen on the highway.

And always it was accompanied by song, prayer, supplication.

The fate of bread was often different from the history that went with it, from the past that gave birth to it. Growth and development are not always in step, as evidenced by the traces they have left. They are often scattered and unclear. So it is often down to stories to try to gather the scattered traces and give them shape. Memories of bread are better preserved than bread itself, for the body of bread is also mortal.

For centuries, public bakeries would spring up in city squares and villages. Like threshing floors, they became places where people could meet and talk. News was passed on, events related – who had had a baby, whose parent had died, whose daughter or son was getting married. Before placing the dough into the oven, it was impressed with a special stone, wooden or metal stamp bearing the name, coat of arms or cross of the person to whom it belonged. Often the loaf of bread bore a cross on its body.

* * *

Across the globe peoples have sown and harvested in different seasons of the year, in months that had more or less rain, in wind or in frost. In the Valley of the Nile, rye was sown in late autumn and harvested in the middle of spring, as its fast growth left room in the field for other crops. The star known by the Egyptians as Sothis – perhaps the same one we call Sirius – would herald the water level, be it high or low, and warn of floods and droughts. The wheat germinated in furrows after the autumn rains so that it could be harvested by the summer.

Maturation and yield were linked to the cycles of the Zodiac, the position of the sun and the moon, the stars and constellations. The “Shepherd’s Star” (Capella in the constellation of Auriga) appeared late into dusk and vanished early into dawn. Wheat was sown under the sign of Virgo and harvested under the sign of Leo. Barley had a shorter cycle, beginning at almost the same time, during Virgo, and ending during Cancer. Rye, which grows even faster, was from Aries to Leo, a period of around 100 days. Various interpretations regarding seeds and the harvest, and sometimes conception and childbirth, are attributed to Virgo, when shooting stars are said to visit the heavens and archangels to descend to earth.

Along coastlines and in a good part of the hinterland, the belief persisted that the phases of the moon affect dough and the leaven it contains – just as they affect the tide, our body and our moods. The only thing more important than the signs of the Zodiac and position of the stars was perhaps the belief that these signs and positions were real and influential. In the Levant, time was measured and the years counted according to the lunar calendar, before the solar calendar was established.

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was one of the first philosophers of ancient Greece to notice and describe the actual connection between bread and the human body: “Let us consider a loaf of bread. It is composed of vegetable matters and helps to nourish our body. However, the constituent parts of the human body are multiple: skin, flesh, blood, veins, sinews, cartilages, bones, hair … How, then, could it happen that the uniformly constituted bread should produce this rich multiplicity of objects? A change of qualities is not possible, so that the sole remaining hypothesis is that the bread that nourishes us already contains the countless forms of matter which the human body displays.” The Roman translator of this ancient text tried to elaborate on its meaning: this philosopher went from bread to grain, from grain to the earth, from both to water, fire, down to the first elements and principles. Hence, the body and food can be connected to temperament: sanguine and choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic.

Gregory of Nyssa in Cappadocia, an early Christian preacher, saw the relationship between the body and bread in a similar way to the materialist Anaxagoras: “If a person sees bread, he sees, in a certain sense, the human body, because the bread that enters the body becomes the body itself.”

In this way, it has often been said that the body and bread understand one another, for bread engages all of our senses, each in its own way. The most often mentioned is the smell of bread, its delicious odour. Once it reaches the nose, it enters the body, where the trace it leaves mingles with memories of childhood, youth and home.

The taste of bread is also closely linked to memories, recent and old. Does it taste the way it used to? Is it better or worse than we remember? Why is or isn’t it the way we remember it, the way it should be?

The touch of bread is not something one forgets, either. Is the crust smooth or crisp, is the middle soft or already stale? How do the hand, palm and fingers pick it up, hold it, break it? To whom do we offer and give it? How, when and where?

Sight has its own criteria. What does the bread before us look like and how could or should it look? Is it similar to bread we have already seen in real life or imagined in our dreams? Is it different? Throughout history, the eyes of the hungry have often shed tears for a crust of bread.

Perhaps the hardest sensory link to identify is the connection between hearing and bread. For bread is quiet, mute. It doesn’t make any noise, but noise does come from the people gathered around it. When a slice of bread is dropped or falls off the table it makes hardly a sound, which may be an indication of something else. For, there are moments when bread can be heard. If a child dropped a piece of bread on the floor, her mother would tell her to pick it up and kiss it. When bakers or homemakers removed a loaf of bread from the oven they would often tap it with their finger to see if it was done. The resulting sound, hollow or not, or both, would give them the answer.

The way bread is placed on the table may be a vestige of an old, more or less forgotten ritual. How bread is handled, when following Jewish or Christian tradition, again reflects the relationship between bread and the body. In some Islamic countries, one presses one’s thumb into the dough before placing it on the hearth or in the oven, to show that it was made by the human hand. In olden times, a piece from the soft middle of the bread was placed on cuts to staunch the bleeding and close the wound. In peacetime, when countries were not at war with each other or themselves, people would gather breadcrumbs into the palm of their hand and keep them. For the birds.

* * *

The oldest names saved from oblivion by the oral and written word tell us how bread was made, the kind of flour that was used, as well as the kind of oven. Some names indicate the spiritual and earthly values vested in it: the “bread of life”, “bread of tears” and the “living bread” of the scriptures; bread as “the Host”, “blessed” and “sacrificial” bread, “bread of angels”, the “bread of friendship” mentioned in the Psalms. Even for the dead, there is bread, the hard and unsweetened “bread for the dead” of All Souls Day. And not forgetting the “holy bread”, ceremonious and austere, on All Saints Day. These are only part of the catalogue of epithets that has been passed down to us through Christian ritual.

Attitudes to the body and bread depended on one’s world outlook, beliefs and faith. The Iranian prophet Zarathustra valued the soul but not the body. Not wishing to contaminate the earth, his followers placed corpses in “towers of silence”, leaving them there for carrion birds to dispense with. The Neoplatonist Plotinus was embarrassed by his body, most probably because of some of its animalistic functions. For this very reason, when a Roman sculptor wanted to make a bust of him, Plotinus refused. Even Seneca tried to avoid the conflict between body and soul: “The wise man, as well as the seeker of wisdom, is no doubt dependent on his body, but he is absent with respect to that greater part of himself (i.e. his body) and he directs his thoughts to the higher things.” St. Paul wrote: “God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for the other.” Yet in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, bread became the reconciler of body and soul, since the Eucharist elevated it to saintliness.

Like the human body, grains age. And in the end, they both decompose. The quality of the grain depends on the type of seed and fertility of the soil in which it grows. Black soil is considered to be the best. Some once popular and valued grains have almost disappeared or died out, grains such as shumara and the “white wheat of Yamamah”. Possibly the last grains of “emmer wheat” were discovered within the walls of the pyramids in Dahshur. From their outward appearance it was thought they had been preserved but the seeds inside them were dead. Even the most fertile soil could not produce an ear of this wheat.

The Egyptians called the fertile land bordering the Nile khemi. The root of the word may come from the word chemistry, or perhaps it was eclipsed by another similar term. The people who made bread for thousands of years knew little about the chemical processes and changes that occur when producing it: the relationship between proteins and carbohydrates; the conversion of carbohydrates into sugar, and sugar into alcohol; the alcohol, which in concert with leaven or yeast, produces gasses that raise the dough and make it porous; the way that the middle of the bread becomes lighter and softer, while the crust becomes crunchy or hard. All this is what gives the bread its shape, its taste and its smell. Its body and soul.

The best bread-makers were careful about the quality of the water they used, whether it was from a river or well, from a spring, a stream or a lake. Whether it streamed down from the mountain or flowed through a valley. How fresh or stagnant, cold or tepid, clear or cloudy it was. Whether the sediment had been removed from the water or retained. Only seawater is not used when making bread, because its very composition is different. Even sea salt, or any coarse salt, does not dissolve easily. When mixed with dough, it turns grey or sometimes even blue. In some countries they dissolve it by “washing” or “soaking” it in fresh water, or by placing it on the fire, where it sputters or dissipates. The best solution is to grind it before using it in the dough crib. In ancient Alexandria, they had mills to grind large clumps of sea salt, where it would become as fine as flour and gave the bread a special taste. In regions where the sea retreated long ago, the salt sometimes retains the fragrance of lavender, rosemary, sage or immortelle, imbuing the dough with it, and thus the bread. This “fleur de sel” is considered to have curative properties for the body.

It has to be said that there is also no small amount of salt in the sweat of ploughmen, sowers and bakers. And in human tears.

Yeast, composed of living cells that are invisible to the naked eye, is absorbed well by the body. Beer yeast is one of the oldest in existence. It was used in ancient times by the Babylonians and Egyptians. The Hebrews discovered it during their time in enslavement under the pharaohs. According to ancient lore, bread yeast may have come into being by accident, when somebody poured a cup of beer into a crib of dough. Some attribute the event to a distracted woman, others to a drunken man, but we shall never know the true story. What we do know is that yeast, with the addition of air and oxygen, becomes the starter, a pre-ferment used in indirect methods of bread-making – also called “mother dough”. Although its components are few, it produces energy that can raise a weight much greater than its own. Bread, beer and wine have different kinds of yeast – similar to one another, yet all different. Even the smallest piece of yeast retains its properties and can transmit them to another piece. It simultaneously renews and consumes itself until it finally depletes itself.

The quality of the bread also depends on the kind of wood used to heat the oven or hearth. Usually these were branches collected from the local area, not far from the fields. Oak and beech, ash, poplar and elm trees grow more in the hinterland than by the sea. Hornbeam, holly-oak, spruce and shrub can be found everywhere, except in the desert. Pinewood was seldom used in bakeries, most likely because of the amount of resin it contains. Cypress trees are spared, perhaps out of respect for the places in which they usually grow – cemeteries and places of worship. The wood of fir trees burns quickly, producing flames rather than heat. In ancient times, Lebanese cedars were used to build ships, but their bark and shavings – left over from making the beams and boards of the keel and deck – were also used to heat the oven. Wild olive trees burn well and have a nice smell, especially when their branches are left to dry in the sun and wind. Once the embers burnt red, the experienced baker would toss a handful of fragrant grasses on them. In the desert, where trees are few if any, the Bedouins would bake flatbread on slabs of stone or hardened sand, and for fuel also use camel dung. These methods date back to biblical times, and the body has become accustomed to it.

Sometimes the bread cracks open in the oven, but if it is made properly it retains its taste. The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius noted in his meditation “To Himself”, written before death caught up with him in the ancient Roman military camp of Vindobona (modern-day Vienna): “We should remark the grace and fascination that there is even in the incidentals of Nature’s processes. When a loaf of bread, for instance, is in the oven, cracks appear in it here and there; and these flaws, though not intended in the baking, have a rightness of their own, and sharpen the appetite (cupiditas edendi).” These “cracks” create “hips” on the body of the bread, and it has to be said that gourmets love them.

And let us not forget the heel or end-piece of a loaf. It is not sliced off with a knife, it is broken off with one’s hands. It is tasted with curiosity and eaten with delight. Even when stale, it retains its taste, if only as a memory. Children especially love the heel, because the heel is more than just a piece of the bread.

The colour of bread can differ, as well. Sometimes its crust is brown, at others quite dark, whereas the middle of the loaf is lighter. Despite their names, white bread isn’t completely white nor is black bread completely black. The ruling dynasties of ancient Egypt included dark-skinned phar­aohs from Nubia and Eritrea. The colour of their skin did not influence their choice of bread, nor the grains used to make it.

The relationship between the body and bread can also be seen reflected in certain customs, rituals and laws. In the Middle East and its environs, in Hellenic cities and islands, especially Crete and Cyprus, in the Maghreb and the Mashreq, women were sometimes forbidden from kneading dough if they were menstruating. Men, meanwhile, were required to shave their arms up to their elbows, cover themselves, and wear a cap to prevent any strand of hair or bead of sweat from falling onto the dough. Only “clean” bodies were permitted to approach the dough crib or bread oven.

Over the centuries, awareness of the beneficial effects of hygiene on one’s health and beauty spread from East to West, and back from West to East. And, here, bread played a special role. The movements and gestures involved in making bread were repeated and adapted from one era to the next. Men did the hard work in bakeries. Women used their finer skills at home. Descriptions and visual depictions show the body bending over cribs in which flour and water are mixed with salt and yeast. The weight shifts from the back and shoulders onto the arms and elbows, from the arms and elbows onto the hands and palms, from the hands and palms onto the dough. The body’s work and effort is invested in the bread itself and the end of the process was often followed by moments of joy, albeit sometimes short-lived.

Sowers and reapers, too, bend their bodies when they work, staring ahead at what still remains to be done, and looking back at how much of the field they have covered, making sure that the seeds have fallen into the furrow, that the spacing is right. Some of these movements have already disappeared from everyday contemporary life, and it must be said that the body may be all the poorer for it.

However, in bread-making our busiest body part is always the hands. They sow, reap, separate the wheat from the chaff with a coarse sieve, separate the flour from the bran with a fine sieve, knead the dough, place it in the oven and remove it when it has been baked. In Emmaus, a town mentioned in the Gospel of Luke as the place where Jesus appeared after his death and resurrection, the disciples recognized the resurrected Christ by the way he picked up, held and broke the offered loaf of bread.