Zenon’s Flour: Grains of Truth from Tel Kedesh

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Just about 2,260 years ago, on November 23, 260 B.C.E., a man named Zenon departed the port of Alexandria for a trip to Palestine. The trip was not his idea. He wasn’t a tourist, nor did he represent his government as a soldier or diplomat—roles that required foreign travel. Zenon was instead dispatched for a much more mundane and unromantic task: to check the books of the various agricultural holdings of the Egyptian king Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Palestine and to record and properly file his assessments of said account books. In other words, Zenon was a bureaucrat whose work in no way affected the grand machinations of history.

Zenon and his prosaic activities would have, indeed, been forgotten, if it were not for the accidental discovery of his personal and business records that survive in the form of more than 2,000 papyrus fragments. A rigorous bureaucrat, Zenon had carefully tucked away these papers at his house in the Egyptian town of Philadelphia, modern Darb el-Gerza, where they were recovered in 1914 by local villagers digging for fertile soil. Known today as the Zenon Archive and containing affidavits, leases, letters, loans, and receipts, these papyri have claimed the attention of historians and elevated Zenon himself from a low-level functionary to an unparalleled resource on the detailed workings of the Ptolemaic administration.

Dozens of papyri relate to Zenon’s trip and business dealings in Palestine, but I am primarily interested in a papyrus (P. Cairo Zen. 1 59004) that dates from early summer 259 B.C.E. It is an account, filed in Greek, in which Zenon records the places visited and quantities of flour acquired and used for his team on their business trip to Palestine. The header at the top of the first column reads ἀλɛύρ [ων] (“of a finely milled wheat”)—in other words, it is a flour account. There follows a list of 11 towns where flour was obtained, each matched with a number, and then a grand total given in artabas (singular:036 artaba, the Persian unit of measurement of volume), explained here as corresponding to 30 or 40 Greek choinikes (about 29 or 39 liters, respectively).

Zenon began his journey around Palestine at the little harbor town of Strato’s Tower (later swallowed by the Herodian Caesarea Maritima), where he landed on February 1, 259 B.C.E., and picked up 5 artabas of flour, probably to top off what had been used on the journey from Alexandria. His next stop was Jerusalem, where he took on another 6 artabas, and from there he proceeded down to Jericho, where he had need of another 5. From another papyrus (P. London 7 1930), we know that Zenon next traveled to Tyros (modern ‘Iraq al-Amir) and thence to Philadelphia (modern Amman; both in modern Jordan).

We pick him up again in our flour account at Abella, which may be the Abila of the Decapolis, though other possibilities also exist. Here he took on 3 artabas only and continued to several sites whose locations are not certain. Eventually he returned to Palestine proper, coming first to Beth Anath, where he acquired 14 artabas (he apparently was running on empty by that point), stopping at nearby Kedesa, where he topped off with 2 more, and then on June 21, 259 B.C.E., exiting the country at Ptolemais 037(Akko), where he picked up 4 artabas to see him safely home.

Wheat, whether threshed or milled, was one of the staples dispensed by the Ptolemaic government. Recipients ranged from priests to tradesmen to officials on business, such as Zenon. In one set of accounts from the Serapeum at Memphis, participants in the ceremony of mourning for the Apis bull each received four loaves of wheat bread daily—and six loaves when they took on extra cultic duties in the temple.

Such records allow us a glimpse of one of the most dramatic changes that the new Macedonian Greek government of the Ptolemies effected in Egypt: a greatly increased bureaucracy that penetrated all sectors of Egyptian society. Papyri attest to a host of new jobs, from tutors of Greek language in rural villages to official “weeders” on agricultural properties. All these new public employees received free food, making Ptolemaic Egypt one of the busiest welfare states of the ancient world.

The burgeoning need of supplying foodstuffs to these employees is surely responsible for King Ptolemy II’s vigorous agricultural experimentation. Third-century papyri attest to a host of new or improved cultivars, including pistachios, garlic, chickpeas, walnuts, and figs. The most commonly cited category, however, is wheat, which appears in various new guises, including a strain that requires only a three-month season from sowing to reaping, another type referred to as Persian wheat, and a third called Syrian wheat.

Linking any of these ancient wheats with specific species is difficult, and none has been conclusively identified. In the case of the three-month wheat and Persian wheat, it is not even clear that their monikers refer to a single discrete strain. Syrian wheat appears more frequently than the other new types—and with sufficiently consistent referents to suggest that it does indeed indicate a single, precisely defined type. Nonetheless, “Syrian wheat” also remains an ancient name without a secure modern translation.

Here is what we know about Syrian wheat from the ancient sources. It is first mentioned in a third-century B.C.E. papyrus, and it appears regularly for 200 years or so thereafter. It is cited in only a few first-century C.E. papyri, after which it disappears from our documentary evidence. Its cultivation was neither eagerly adopted nor enthusiastically continued by native Egyptian farmers—but seems to have required additional urging and sometimes compensation by the government. The only other sure point about it is that it originated from a region that Egyptians called Syria.

Scholars suggest that Syrian wheat may be einkorn (Triticum monococcum), a hulled one-seeded variety, or durum (Triticum durum), known commonly as “hard” or “pasta” wheat. No particular evidence supports the identification of the former. The main argument in favor of the latter is the chronological congruity of the appearance of “Syrian wheat” in sources and the cultivation of durum wheat in Egypt itself.

Prior to Ptolemaic times, the staple Egyptian wheat was husked emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum), which Herodotus called olura. By the second century B.C.E., olura cultivation had declined dramatically in favor of durum wheat. Once durum appeared, it grew in popularity, as attested by paleobotanical evidence from Egyptian sites of the second and third centuries C.E. This is inconsistent with the papyrological evidence, in which references to Syrian wheat cease by this time. This little conundrum brings us back to Zenon’s flour account.

In 1997, archaeologists from the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota began excavations at Tel Kedesh, the site of ancient Kedesa, the second-to-last stop on Zenon’s itinerary. Today Tel Kedesh is a large mound located on the Lebanese border in northern Israel.

A magnetometric survey revealed the possible presence of a large structure at the mound’s south end. When we opened several trenches in what looked to be the building’s corners, we indeed found the outlines of an enormous edifice, approximately 20,000 square feet. Our excavations revealed this to be an administrative complex, centered on a large rectangular courtyard and surrounded by banks of rooms, with a double row along its northern side. We call it the Persian and Hellenistic 038Administrative Building.

The building was apparently abandoned in haste, and we recovered largely intact vessels lying on the floors. The abandonment seems to have occurred around the middle of the second century B.C.E. and is probably linked with a battle recounted in 1 Maccabees between Demetrios I of Syria and the Hasmonean king Jonathan.

In the room adjacent to the building’s northwest corner, we found 14 storage jars lining the walls. The jars are enormous, each standing about 5 feet tall. We were naturally curious about their contents. Identifying ancient foodstuffs is a relatively common archaeological procedure when there are visible remains, such as charred grains or fruit pits or vegetable seeds. Unfortunately, all that was visible to the naked eye inside our jars was dirt. Nonetheless, we hoped that some analytical technique would allow us to recover and identify their original contents.

Bob Thompson and Terry Ball are two scholars who have had much success sampling ancient vessels for the microscopic dried silica skins of plant bodies, which paleobotanists call phytoliths. Bob and Terry agreed to help us, along with Diana Kittleson, a research scientist at the Pillsbury Technology Center in Minneapolis.

First, we removed the soil within the jars until we came close to the vessel wall. Then we carefully scraped away the remaining soil, saving that for comparative analysis, and finally scraped clean the residue that adhered directly to the interior surface. We soaked this residue overnight in a bath of distilled water and bleach, then heated it in nitric acid to digest any organic remains that might contaminate the residue. Next, we isolated the solid matter by diluting the mixture with distilled water, centrifuging, and pipetting off the liquid.

Repeating this procedure five times, we ended up with clean samples of solid matter that we mounted on slides to view under the microscope. The resultant images revealed that we had isolated hundreds of phytoliths, or remains of the cereals that had once been inside the jars.

We conducted two independent analyses to identify the cereals that produced these phytoliths. Both identified the phytoliths as belonging to 039Triticum aestivum, known commonly as “soft” or “bread wheat.”

This seemingly straightforward conclusion was quite surprising, because in ancient times Triticum aestivum was rare throughout Palestine. The most common type of wheat grown in this region, from the Bronze Age on, was Triticum durum or “pasta wheat.” Durum, you recall, was the wheat type that replaced olura in Egypt, beginning in the third century B.C.E.

The fact that the large jars at Kedesh contained bread wheat instead of durum suggests that the site’s administrators were engaged in agricultural experiments. Such activities probably originated in the third century B.C.E. when the site served as an outpost of the Ptolemaic government.

A bulla recovered from a room near the grain storeroom is stamped with the site’s name in Greek (Kudissos), a large sheaf of wheat, and a cluster of grapes. This foregrounds the commodities for which the area was known in antiquity (and, as it happens, today).

The end-date of the storeroom and jars at Tel Kedesh is the mid-second century B.C.E.—about 100 years after Zenon’s trip. What is the evidence that this is the building Zenon visited and that the bread wheat stored in the large jars is the variety Zenon and his entourage picked up as they set off on the final leg of their journey?

Our building is not the first such structure at the site. In several trenches, we have discovered evidence for another building of similar size and plan, with monumental stone walls that are aligned with—but just below—the later walls. The earlier walls date from the fifth century B.C.E., when this entire region belonged to the Achaemenid Persian province of the “Land Beyond the River.” Stray finds of the same period support identifying this earlier structure as an administrative center as well. Kedesh thus seems 040to have functioned as a government center over a period of several hundred years.

I believe that the combination of these various factors—the site’s long-lived administrative status, its identification as a stop on a Ptolemaic official’s route, the attested agricultural experiments of the Ptolemies, and the peculiarity of finding Triticum aestivum in the jars—allows us to postulate that the 2 artabas of flour that Zenon picked up here more than 2,000 years ago were in fact bread wheat (Triticum aestivum).

Finally, I would like to connect bread wheat with the contemporary, unidentified “Syrian wheat.”

Triticum aestivum is attested in Egyptian archaeological contexts from the later first millennium B.C.E., but it disappears after the first century C.E. This chronology and distribution of Triticum aestivum are consistent with what little we can glean about Syrian wheat. Additionally, there is one final point that may explain the strain’s decided unpopularity with native Egyptians.

In antiquity, the average person relied on bread, which constituted about 75 percent of the calories in the average diet. Triticum durum has very little gluten, and so it makes a low, thick, chewy bread. Triticum aestivum, on the other hand, has a high gluten content. When combined with yeast and kneaded, it produces a light, airy loaf.

A dietary regime dependent on bread would not be well served by Triticum aestivum since the end product would have been a much less filling staple than the flat bread produced from durum wheat. This fundamental difference might explain why Egyptians rejected Syrian wheat.

Being an official on government business, Zenon naturally had no say in the matter. One can only hope that he was able to supplement his rations with some heartier fare.

Ancient documents abound with obscure terminology. Even the names for such staples as wheat can evade modern attempts to match them with the wheat strains cultivated in the ancient world. Grain remains excavated at Tel Kedesh in northern Israel may finally shed light on some of the elusive wheats that appear in the famed Zenon Archive from the third century B.C.E.