From Peasant To Pharaoh: The Popularity of ‘Pizza’ in the Ancient World

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A medieval baker with his apprentice. The Bodleian Library, Oxford. (Public Domain)

From Peasant To Pharaoh: The Popularity of ‘Pizza’ in the Ancient World

Since the ancient times, people have been eating pizza in one form or another. By 2200 BC, Egyptian flatbread was topped with a spread called dukkah and evidence of flatbread consumed in Italy also date back to 2000 BC. Although it is known that the Persians, Etruscans and Greeks were producing something that can loosely be identified as pizza from 930 to 730 BC, there is still much that is unknown and claiming that these flatbreads with toppings such as spices or other foodstuffs constitutes ‘pizza’ can easily invoke offence and has become a hot topic in the age of the internet. Therefore, it is perhaps better advised to call them flatbreads and to describe the ingredients of the toppings added to give them more flavour, than to label them ‘pizza’.

A woman baking bread by Jean-François Millet (1854) Kröller-Müller Museum (Public Domain)

A woman baking bread by Jean-François Millet (1854) Kröller-Müller Museum (Public Domain)

As far back as antiquity, pieces of flatbread topped with savouries served as a simple meal.  In the sixth century BC, Persian soldiers of the Achaemenid Empire during the rule of Darius the Great (550 BC - 486 BC) baked flatbreads covered with cheese and dates on top of their battle shields.


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