Syrian wheat : From grain depots to cultic offerings

AMMAN — Tell Kadesh, located in Upper Galilee, was a site of agricultural innovations implemented during the reign of the Ptolemy II Philadelphus (ruled between 284 BC and 247 BC). According to available papyri archives, Palestine and southern Phoenicia were directly ruled by the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt.

One of these papyri is an expense account that details a delegation’s receipt of two measures of flour to carry them through the next leg of their journey, thus revealing that Kadesh was an official depot for grain disbursements.

"Kadesh was one of many such sites at that time, in both Palestine and Egypt proper, because wheat, whether threshed or milled, was one of the staples dispensed by the Ptolemaic government," said the scholar Andrea Berlin from Boston University, adding that in one set of accounts from the Serapeum at Memphis, for example, 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. 

The new Greek government of the Ptolemies introduced an enormous 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," Berlin explained, adding that government officials received payment in food, with wheat being a common mean of payment.

According to the 3rd-century BC papyri, improved varieties of garlic, chickpeas, walnuts, figs and pistachios were introduced to the Egyptian state, with wheat being the most commonly mentioned. One of these wheat varieties came from "Kalymnos" and was also called Syrian and/or Persian wheat.

"Linking any of this ancient wheat with specific species is difficult, and none have been conclusively identified. In the case of 'wheat of Kalymnos' and 'Persian wheat', it is not even clear that their names refer to a single discrete strain. 'Syrian wheat’, on the other hand, appears more frequent than any other new type, and with sufficiently consistent referents to suggest it indicates a single, precisely defined type," Berlin underlined, adding that “Syrian Wheat” remains an ancient name without a secure modern translation.

Some scholars have connected Syrian wheat with a strain that matures fast and can be harvested after three months. However, there is no supporting evidence of einkorn beyond the linkage of an unknown name and an unaccounted-for strain. 

"The main argument in favour of durum is the chronological congruity of the appearance of 'Syrian wheat' in the sources and the widespread cultivation of durum wheat in Egypt itself. Prior to Ptolemaic times, the staple Egyptian wheat was husked emmer wheat [Triticum dicoccum], the type that the ancient historian Herodotus called olyra," noted Berlin. 

She added that by the 2nd century BC olyra cultivation had declined dramatically in favour of durum. Once durum appeared, it grew in popularity, and is the only wheat attested in Egyptian archaeological contexts from the 1st centuries AD onward.

Could ‘Syrian wheat’ in fact be Triticum aestivum?

"For this to be plausible, one would have to document the absence or at least rarity of Triticum aestivum in Egypt prior to Ptolemaic times, as well as the congruent appearances of ‘Syrian wheat’ in the papyrological evidence with Triticum aestivum in the archaeological record, " speculated Berlin, noting that the first of these points is well supported; there is only scant evidence for the second. 

By the 2nd century AD it had again disappeared, as the palaeo-botanical report from the large Fayum site of Karanis attests, Berlin continued. She stressed that unlike Triticum durum, whose cultivation in Egypt has never ceased since its introduction in Ptolemaic times, the existing evidence of the chronology and distribution of Triticum aestivumare aligns with what we can glean about “Syrian wheat”.

"The fact that Triticum aestivum is rarely found in archaeological contexts of this period, combined with its discovery in a building that formed part of the official Ptolemaic administrative network, are supports the identification of this species as the ancient 'Syrian wheat'," Berlin underscored.