Bayside Dietetics
By Sarah Smith from Bayside Dietetics
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This blog is a fictional story that is based on insight we have into ancient Egyptian beliefs and practices from around 800BC.
Ahti squirmed at the sight of her father making a skilled incision in the abdomen of the dead body. No matter how often she’d seen him do this part of his job, it never failed to make her tummy churn. There was a problem though. Ahti knew that long after the guts had been removed, dried and then replaced in the dead body, her own gut would still be churning. It had been this way for 4 months now. Ahti knew why. Her face turned pink as she recalled the incident four months ago, when she knew she had made Serqet, the goddess protecting the gut of the deceased, very angry.
Ahti stole some bread which was being made as an offering to Serqet. This was not something she had done previously. Because of her father’s skills embalming, her family had enough money to eat at every meal, but certainly not any extra food like the rich folk in her city. This extra bite of bread made her dream, just for the moment, that she lived in one of those large homes on the hill.
Once the bread was removed from the offering plate, Ahti popped the piece into her mouth. It had slightly hardened with the time it had spent exposed to the air, but it hit the space in her empty tummy with satisfaction. It was then she wondered what really happens when the goddess of the gut was angry. She was, after all, only there to protect the gut of the deceased. Surely here on earth there would be no effect.
Ever since that moment, however, Ahti knew she had upset Serqet because her stomach had struggle to settle. She wondered how long she would be angry at her for stealing the bread but knew with a heavy heart, that issues of digestion were untreatable. She tried all that she could by mashing together all the plants that could help – garlic, juniper, sandalwood and mint, then she made that into a tea to sip on.
What we know now is the Ahti’s staple diet would have been keeping her gut in good shape. The Egyptian diet is essentially the Mediterranean diet, which is still renowned to provide wonderful health benefits, including keeping the gut happy. Who knows what had upset Ahti’s gut? Beliefs at the time would have led to speculation around the god or goddess of the gut being offended. The gut was considered so important to ancient Egyptians that it had its own god and goddess for protection, both for guts of the living and guts of the deceased. There were doctors at the time who specialised in guts, although digestive ailments were generally considered untreatable.
Perhaps Ahti was more affected by the anxiety of what she’d done, or even bacteria on the stale bread. Other possibilities that we’d investigate with more modern medicine are changes in the diet to consume more processed foods or FODMAPs (foods that may cause tummy pain in humans) or the onset of coeliac disease.
While this blog has been more focussed on sharing with you how early the gut was considered critical to human health, if you are more interested in how to nourish yours, perhaps check out the Mediterranean diet. After all, it has been keeping the goddess of the gut happy for generations.
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