It turns out that the Ancient Egyptians had ancient burger vans just like us, although we are pretty certain they didn’t have to cover their vehicles with some sort of commercial vehicle insurance!
The Discovery
Archaeologists have uncovered remains of a huge catering operation for those who were building the pyramids at Giza. They have predicted that from the animal bones they found, the builders were being served 4,000lbs of meat a day at what they believe to be the village where the builders stayed. It is estimated that the builders were on the site for around 35 years and is sometimes referred to as the “Lost City of the Pyramid Builders”.
What they ate
The archaeologists have discovered cattle, sheep and goats bones at a site where they are believed to have been slaughtered every day. Along with this very meat heavy diet is it thought that the builders were well looked after as there is evidence of medical care in the form of healed bones. This suggests that they were actually living and working in reasonable conditions.
Richard Redding is the chief research officer at Ancient Egypt Research Associates and he has said, “People were taken care of and they were well fed when they were down there working, so there would have been attractiveness to that.
“They probably got a much better diet than they got in their village.”
Redding predicted that the workers would have needed 45 to 50 grams of protein a day to carry out the work they would have been doing but most of this would have come from non-meat foods such as fish and beans.
There was also a town discovered nearby that were also eating a lot of pigs and were probably trading food with those in the workers town. Redding went on to say, “What we think now is that more likely, it was a large portion of the work force, the more skilled laborers living in the workers town and that there were more temporary camps up by the pyramids where the temporary workers who came in would be housed.”
Either way, no matter where they lived, it looks like they had food stations with nutritional sources of food in order the keep the builders healthy to carry on with their jobs. This is more than can be said for today’s burger vans!