Imagine waking up in Jerusalem, but the year is seven hundred Before the Common Era. You step out of your home, and instead of the smell of fresh roasted coffee and rugelach from the bakery down the street, the air is thick with the scent of woodsmoke, baking barley bread, and maybe a hint of sun-ripened olives. It is a completely different sensory world, and yet, it is the foundation of everything we know about this city and its culture. Welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and today we are diving into the pantry of the ancient world.
And I am Herman Poppleberry. Corn, I have been looking forward to this one. Our housemate Daniel sent over a prompt that really gets to the heart of what it means to live in this region. He was mentioning how he moved to Israel because of his connection to the land, but he is curious about what that connection actually looked like on a dinner plate twenty-seven hundred years ago. And he mentioned his own breakfast today was a few rugelach and a soda, which, let us be honest, probably would have shocked an ancient Judean more than a smartphone would.
It is funny you say that. We take so much for granted when we think about Mediterranean or Middle Eastern food. We think of Israeli salad with tomatoes and cucumbers, or spicy peppers, or even potatoes in a slow-cooked stew. But Daniel hit on a fascinating point in his prompt. Almost none of those things existed here back then.
Exactly. No tomatoes, no potatoes, no peppers, no corn, no chocolate, no vanilla. All of those are New World crops. They did not arrive here until after the late fifteenth century. If you take away the tomato and the pepper, you are stripping away the red from the palette of local cuisine. You are left with a lot of greens, tans, and deep purples. It is a very different aesthetic and flavor profile.
So, let us start with Daniel's first question. If I am waking up in biblical Jerusalem, what am I actually eating for breakfast? Is there even such a thing as breakfast in the way we think of it?
The short answer is... probably not. In the ancient world, and specifically in the Levant during the Iron Age, the concept of three square meals a day is a total anachronism. Most people were living an agrarian lifestyle. You woke up with the sun, and you went to work immediately. You might grab a handful of parched grain, maybe a few dried figs or a piece of bread left over from the night before, but you did not sit down for a meal.
So it was more about fuel for the morning labor?
Precisely. The first real meal of the day, which we might call a late breakfast or an early lunch, usually happened around mid-morning, maybe ten or eleven o'clock. This was the Aruchat Boker. But it was not eggs and pancakes. It was likely bread, which was the absolute center of the universe for them, dipped in olive oil or maybe a bit of vinegar. You might have some onions, some garlic, and if you were lucky, some goat cheese or yogurt.
You mentioned bread being the center of the universe. I think we underestimate how much bread meant back then. It was not a side dish. It was the meal.
Oh, it was the primary source of calories. Between fifty and seventy percent of a person's daily caloric intake came from grain. And it was not the fluffy white sourdough we buy at the market. It was mostly barley or emmer wheat. Barley was the food of the common people because it grows better in poor soil and with less water. Wheat was more of a luxury item, often reserved for the wealthy or for Temple offerings.
And the bread was different, right? It was not these big leavened loaves.
Right. It was mostly flatbreads, similar to a thick pita or a laffa, baked on a hot stone or in a clay oven called a tannur. You used the bread as your utensil. You did not have forks and spoons. You tore off a piece of bread and scooped up your lentils or your yogurt. This is why the Hebrew word for bread, lechem, is so closely related to the word for food in general. To eat was to eat bread.
That brings us to Daniel's question about the frequency of meals. If they had this mid-morning meal, when was the next one?
Usually, there were only two main meals. The second one happened in the evening, after the work was done but before it got too dark to see. This was the main social event of the day for a family. This is when you would have the heavier stews. You would have your legumes, which Daniel correctly identified as the backbone of the diet. Lentils, chickpeas, and fava beans.
I want to stop you on the fava beans for a second. Daniel mentioned that they have sort of fallen out of favor in modern Israel compared to Egypt, where they are a national staple as ful medames. Why do you think that is? Because they were clearly huge in the biblical period.
It is an interesting cultural shift. In the Bible, we see fava beans mentioned, for example, when David is fleeing from Absalom and people bring him supplies, including beans and lentils. They were easy to dry and store. I suspect the shift away from fava beans in modern Jewish Israeli cuisine might have something to do with the prevalence of G six P D deficiency in certain Jewish populations, particularly from Iraq and North Africa. This condition, often called favism, means eating fava beans can actually be dangerous or even fatal for some people. But in the ancient world, they were a primary protein source. They were the meat of the poor.
Let us talk about actual meat, though. Daniel asked about the kosher-keeping world and how often they ate animals. We have this image of animal sacrifice in the Temple, which makes it seem like there was meat everywhere. But for the average person living in a village outside of Jerusalem, what did that look like?
It was very rare. Meat was a luxury, a festive food. You did not kill a healthy, productive animal just because you wanted a steak. A goat provided milk for cheese and yogurt, and its hair provided wool. A sheep provided even better wool. You only slaughtered an animal for a special occasion, like a wedding, a major religious festival, or to honor a very important guest.
So the fatted calf really was a big deal.
It was a massive deal. Most of the time, if you were eating meat, it was probably an older animal that was no longer productive, or a surplus male. And even then, it was usually boiled in a stew to make it go further and to tenderize the tough meat. The idea of roasting a whole animal over a fire was almost exclusively a sacrificial or high-holiday practice.
Daniel also asked about birds, specifically pigeons. Were they common on the menu?
Pigeons and doves were incredibly common. In fact, they were the most accessible form of animal protein for the poor. If you look at the archaeological record in Jerusalem and the surrounding hills, you find these structures called columbaria. They are basically massive pigeon lofts carved into the rock with hundreds of little niches.
I have seen those! Some of them are huge.
They were industrial-scale bird farms. Pigeons were perfect because they forage for their own food, they multiply quickly, and they provide two things: meat and fertilizer. The droppings, or guano, were essential for intensive agriculture in the thin soil of the Judean hills. And in terms of the Law, pigeons were one of the few birds explicitly permitted for sacrifice, especially for those who could not afford a sheep or a goat. So if you were a regular person in Jerusalem, a pigeon was your go-to meat.
What about fish? We are not that far from the Mediterranean, and the Sea of Galilee is to the north. Did people in Jerusalem eat fish?
They did, but it had to be preserved. You could not just bring fresh fish up to Jerusalem in the heat before the invention of refrigeration. It was salted or dried. We actually find fish bones in archaeological digs in Jerusalem that come from both the Mediterranean and the Nile river. There was a robust trade in dried fish. It was a common way to add salt and protein to a grain-heavy diet. In fact, Jerusalem even had a Fish Gate, which likely served as the primary market for these imports.
That is fascinating. The Nile? So they were importing fish from Egypt?
Absolutely. Archaeologists have found bones of the Nile Perch in Iron Age layers of the City of David. The trade networks were much more sophisticated than we often give them credit for. But again, it would have been a salty, pungent addition to a meal, not a fresh fillet.
I want to go back to the missing ingredients. If you do not have tomatoes for acid or sugar for sweetness, how are you flavoring this food? What does an ancient Judean spice rack look like?
It is very earthy and herbal. You have salt, of course, which was a precious commodity often coming from the Dead Sea. You have garlic and onions, which were staples. For herbs, you are looking at hyssop, which is likely what we call zaatar today, as well as mint, dill, and cumin. For acidity, instead of lemons or tomatoes, you used vinegar made from wine or fermented fruit, or you used sumac, which has that wonderful tartness.
And sweetness?
No refined sugar. Sweetness came from the Seven Species. This is a crucial concept for understanding the diet. Deuteronomy lists seven things the land is blessed with: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and honey. But here is the catch: when the Bible says honey, it almost never means bee honey. It means date syrup, known as silan.
Right, because bee-keeping as we know it was not really a major thing until much later, although they did find that ancient apiary in Tel Rehov a few years ago.
Exactly, the Tel Rehov find from the tenth century Before the Common Era was a huge discovery because it showed there was some large-scale beekeeping, but for most people, sweetness came from dates and figs. You would boil down dates into a thick, dark, incredibly sweet syrup. That was your sugar. And grapes, of course, were used for wine, but also dried into raisins or boiled down into a grape honey called dibs.
So the flavor profile is very much built around these deep, fermented, and concentrated fruit flavors. It sounds quite rich, actually.
It was! But it was also very seasonal. You ate what was ripe, or what you had dried. In the summer, you had fresh grapes and figs. In the winter, you were eating the dried versions and relying heavily on your stored grain and oil.
Let us talk about the religious holidays Daniel mentioned. If it is Passover or Shavuot, what is the menu looking like? How does it differ from a Tuesday in November?
Holidays were the time when the meat sparingly rule was broken. For Passover, the centerpiece was the Paschal lamb. But again, the way it was eaten was very specific. It had to be roasted, not boiled, which was a departure from the usual way of cooking meat. You ate it with bitter herbs and unleavened bread.
And what about the other festivals?
Shavuot was the festival of the first fruits, the grain harvest. So you would have the best possible bread made from the new wheat. It was a celebration of abundance. Sukkot, the harvest festival in the autumn, would be the time of the great fruit harvest. You would be eating fresh pomegranates, grapes, and figs. It was probably the time of year when people were the best fed.
One thing that fascinates me about the ancient kosher world is how the laws we know today were still in their infancy. Daniel asked what the kosher-keeping world was like. Herman, how different was it from a modern kosher kitchen in Jerusalem today?
It was significantly different in practice, even if the core principles were there. The written Torah prohibits eating certain animals like pigs, camels, or shellfish, and it forbids boiling a kid in its mother's milk. But the massive system of fences and rabbinic interpretations we have now—like having two separate sinks, waiting six hours between meat and dairy, or having separate sets of dishes—that largely developed much later, in the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods and into the Middle Ages.
So, if I am in biblical Jerusalem, am I eating a cheeseburger?
Well, probably not, but not necessarily for the reasons you think. First, as we established, you rarely had beef. If you had meat, it was goat or sheep. And while you might not have intentionally boiled a goat in its own mother's milk, the strict separation of meat and dairy products in every meal was not yet the universal standard of the Iron Age. You would avoid the specific forbidden acts, but the kosher kitchen as a physical space with divided zones did not exist.
That is a big distinction. It feels like the diet was naturally more kosher simply because of what was available. You did not have to worry about whether your processed snack had a certain emulsifier in it.
Exactly. It was a whole-food diet by necessity. And interestingly, the archaeological record shows that in Judean sites, pig bones are almost entirely absent, whereas in Philistine sites along the coast, pig bones are quite common. So even twenty-seven hundred years ago, you can see a distinct food identity forming. People were choosing what to eat based on their cultural and religious boundaries.
I find it interesting that Daniel mentioned the vegetarian-heavy nature of the diet. Today, we talk about the Mediterranean diet as this gold standard for health. It feels like the ancient Israelites were living that by default.
They really were. High fiber from the legumes and whole grains, healthy fats from the olive oil, plenty of antioxidants from the grapes and pomegranates, and very little red meat or processed sugar. If you survived childhood and avoided infectious diseases or war, you were probably quite healthy on this diet.
But there were downsides, right? I mean, what about vitamin deficiencies? Or just the sheer grit in the food?
Oh, the grit was a huge problem. They ground their grain using basalt grindstones. Over time, tiny particles of stone would break off and get mixed into the flour. If you look at the teeth of ancient skeletons from this region, they are often worn down almost to the gum line by the time the person reached their thirties. They were essentially eating sandpaper with every loaf of bread. This led to massive dental issues and abscesses.
That is a detail you do not often see in the movies. Everyone has perfect white teeth in the biblical epics.
Not exactly. And there was the constant threat of drought. If the early rains did not come, the grain would fail. If the grain failed, you did not just go to the store and buy imported flour. You starved. The diet was a constant negotiation with the land and the weather. That is why so much of the religious calendar and the prayers are centered around rain and harvest. Food was not just fuel; it was a direct reflection of your relationship with the divine.
It makes me think about the Second Order Effects we always talk about. If your entire life is dictated by the grain cycle, your sense of time is different. Your sense of community is different because you need your neighbors to help with the harvest or to share a communal oven.
Absolutely. And the social hierarchy was reflected in the food. The King in his palace in Jerusalem would be eating fine white wheat bread, fresh meat more regularly, and wine imported from the best vineyards. The commoner in the City of David would be eating barley porridge and salted fish. But even for the King, the menu was still limited by the seasons and the local geography.
I want to touch on the pigeons again, because that really struck me. If I am a regular person and I am bringing a pigeon to the Temple, I am not just giving it away, right? Some of that meat comes back to me?
Yes, that is a common misconception about sacrifice. People think the animal was just burned up and wasted. In most types of sacrifices, like the Shelamim or Peace Offerings, only the fat and certain internal organs were burned. The rest of the meat was divided between the priests and the person bringing the offering. The Temple was, in a very real sense, the biggest barbecue restaurant in Jerusalem. It was the place where people actually got to eat meat.
So, it was a communal feast. It was a way of distributing protein to the population.
Exactly. It served a social and nutritional function as much as a religious one. It brought people together to share a rare luxury.
Let us move to the practical takeaways for our listeners. If someone wants to eat like a biblical Jerusalemite today, what are the key elements?
Start with the grains. Try to find whole-grain barley or emmer wheat. Make it the center of your meal, not just a side. Use high-quality olive oil as your primary fat. Incorporate legumes like lentils and chickpeas into almost everything. For sweetness, use dates or date syrup instead of sugar. And most importantly, eat seasonally. Try to connect with what is actually growing in your region right now.
And maybe skip the tomatoes for a day?
If you really want the authentic experience, yes! Try using sumac or pomegranate molasses for that tartness. It will completely change the way you think about flavor. And honestly, it is delicious. There is a reason these ingredients have lasted for thousands of years.
I also think the idea of the two-meal day is something people are experimenting with again through intermittent fasting. It is funny how these ancient patterns keep coming back around.
It is true. Our bodies evolved for that kind of rhythm. We are not necessarily designed to have a constant stream of glucose from sunup to sundown. There is something to be said for the hunger and feast cycle of the ancient world.
You know, talking about this makes me want to head over to the market and see what is in season. We live in a place where you can still find a lot of these ancient varieties if you look for them.
You really can. If you go to the Old City or some of the more traditional stalls in Mahane Yehuda, you can find the baladi varieties of fruits and vegetables. Baladi basically means of the land. They are often smaller, maybe not as pretty as the supermarket versions, but the flavor is incredibly intense. That is the closest we can get to the taste of twenty-seven hundred years ago.
Well, Herman, I think we have given Daniel a lot to chew on. From the grit in the bread to the pigeon lofts in the hills, the ancient world was a lot more complex and flavorful than a simple vegetarian label suggests.
It was a world of deep textures and earthy smells. And it is a reminder that even the most mundane thing—like what we eat for breakfast—is part of a much larger story of geography, technology, and faith.
Before we wrap up, I want to remind everyone that if you are enjoying these deep dives into the weird and wonderful prompts Daniel sends our way, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your podcast app or on Spotify. It genuinely helps other people find the show and join the conversation.
It really does. We love seeing the community grow. And remember, you can find our entire archive of over four hundred and seventy episodes at myweirdprompts.com. There is a search bar there, so if you want to find that episode we did on the legal lasagna of Israel or the one on paranormal data, just type it in.
This has been My Weird Prompts. A huge thanks to our housemate Daniel for the prompt—even if his rugelach breakfast would have confused an ancient Judean.
Thanks for listening, everyone. We will be back next week with another exploration. Until then, stay curious.
And eat your lentils! Goodbye!
See ya!
Wait, Herman, I just realized something. If they didn't have potatoes, what did they put in their slow-cooked Sabbath stew?
Great question. It was called hamin, which just means hot thing. It would have been a thick, heavy porridge of whole wheat berries, chickpeas, and maybe some marrow bones. It would have been much denser than the potato-heavy versions we see today.
That sounds incredibly filling. Okay, now I am really done. My stomach is growling. Let's go find some hummus.
With plenty of olive oil! Peace!
Peace.
