where the grain was poured in. Another opening at the bot-
tom was used to remove the grain. Th is structural form ex-
isted until the beginning of the Greco-Roman Period in 332
b.c.e. and was supplemented by trapezoidal structures used
for storing cereals to be used for sowing in the next season.
Quadrangular chambers, fi lled through small holes on the
ceiling, also are evidenced by models and drawings. Some-
times terms for the contents were written on the models.
Th e Egyptian temples were given estates and royal en-
dowments as off erings to the gods. Th e priesthood, in turn,
received food and other off erings through an elaborate allo-
cation formula called the Reversion of Off erings. Holding and
redistributing the off erings required the use of large storage
facilities, which belonged to the temples. Th e best-preserved
set of large storage facilities is attached to the Ramesseum,
which could support about 3,400 families (about 17,000 to
20,000 people) for a year with grain. Th e temple storehouses
consisted of long mud-brick, barrel-vaulted halls of vary-
ing size with fi lling holes at the top, erected in groups with
a shared vestibule. Th e temples built up substantial reserves
for grain and other goods. From these or state granaries each
farmer got his grain for sowing, again recorded by scribes.
Th e granaries housed the food that was used as payment for
the army, workers on building projects, and other citizens.
Egyptian houses, including palaces, also contained
storerooms and granaries. Some of the houses of the planned
towns in El-Lahun, Tell El-‘Amârna, and Medina had a row
of storerooms. El-Lahun shows evidence of several locations
within the town rather than a central granary. Large estates
had large private storerooms, while those who lived in the
country had smaller, mostly conical ones that stored nearly
everything in the Egyptians’ diet.
As a form of preservation, most food was dried in air and
sunlight. Th ere is little evidence for smoking, probably for
lack of wood. Pickling with brine, oil, or salt was common as
salt draws out liquid. Th e use of vinegar is assumed but not
evidenced. Meat and poultry were preserved through the use
of fat, honey, or beer.
If meat was not consumed immediately aft er hanging,
it was cut, wet- or dry-salted, dried in sun and air, possibly
smoked, and cured in jars. As the food cooled inside the jars,
a sort of vacuum was created that kept the food from spoiling.
Some of these jars were made of marl clay, which kept their
contents cool. Th e food was later cooked before it was eaten,
which killed most bacteria in the process.
Another perishable food was fi sh. Much of the catch was
cleaned, gutted, and dried in the sun on wooden frames. It
sometimes was salted or pickled in oil. Roe was dried or pick-
led in salt and then pressed and dried. Drying, salting, and
pickling were methods of preservation for small birds, too.
Dairy products such as cheese were salted and sometimes
preserved in oil, dried, and hardened. Dates, fi gs, olives, or
grapes could be dried, ground, pickled, or pressed. Storing
grain in spikelet form, rather than threshed, helped to pro-
tect it from attacks by insects or other pests. Herbs such ascoriander, black cumin, and fenugreek were added as insecti-
cides, as evidenced in a model granary of the Egyptian king
Tutankhamen (r. 1333–1323 b.c.e.) containing emmer with
other seeds.THE MIDDLE EAST
BY LYN GREEN
Th e fi rst permanent settlements appeared in the ancient
Near East during the Neolithic Period. Th ey were small
and usually clustered around sources of water, as all later
towns would be. Th ese most ancient farmers tended to settle
particularly along rivers, where alluvial soil carried by the
water spread out and made fertile, easily cultivated agricul-
tural land. Th eir houses and probably storage buildings were
made of the same unbaked river mud. Th e crops grown by
these earliest farmers did not have a high yield, since they
were still essentially wild forms of the plants. Th e farmers,
therefore, would not have been able to put aside large quan-
tities of food between growing seasons. To supplement the
grains and pulses such as barley, einkorn, emmer, lentils,
peas, chick peas, and bitter vetch, they also ate wild fruits
and nuts, fi sh, birds, and game. Because storage facilities did
not need to be large or to keep food for extended periods of
time, the earliest-known storage facilities (from the Pre-Pot-
tery Neolithic A Period, perhaps as early as 8500 b.c.e.) were
small bins and silos and probably baskets or sacks. Th e lat-
ter have not survived because they would have been made of
rushes, reeds, or hide.
Later civilizations of the area, such as the Halaf culture
(dating to as long ago as the sixth millennium b.c.e.), prac-
ticed agriculture and stored grain in beehive-shaped com-
munal granaries. Many centuries later, granaries of the same
shape were built at the sites of Arad and Beth Yerah. Th e
Halaf storage facilities were small and shared only among a
few dwellings. By contrast, the Bronze Age (ca. 3500–ca. 1200
b.c.e.) granaries of Arad and Beth Yerah were much larger and
served whole communities. Th ey rested on stone foundations
and were usually from 13 to 30 feet in diameter. All of these
storage buildings were built above the ground, but farmers of
the fi ft h millennium b.c.e. in the Negev desert stored their
food in below-ground chambers linked to each other and to
the living quarters by a serious of subterranean tunnels.
Within the underground storerooms were pits where grain,
lentils, and other foodstuff s were stored. Underground stor-
age in the desert was both cool and dry and proved so eff ective
that these farmers continued to store grain underground even
aft er they began to build their houses on the surface.
Th e earliest storage containers of the ancient Near East,
dating to the early Neolithic Period, diff er markedly from
all later forms of storage because they appear before pottery
was made. All later civilizations depended heavily on pottery
storage jars in all sizes and shapes. Th ese pottery pieces were
almost always of undecorated fi red clay, though they could
be covered with a thin clay coating called a slip. Slip makes1064 storage and preservation: The Middle East0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1064 1064 10/10/07 2:30:56 PM