Egyptian cheese

Egyptian cheese (Egyptian Arabic: جبنة‎‎ gebna  pronounced [ˈɡebnæ]) has a long history, and cheese is an important part of the modern Egyptian diet. There is evidence of cheese-making over 5,000 years ago in the time of the First Dynasty of Egypt. In the Middle Ages Damietta was famous for its soft, white pickled cheese. Cheese was also imported, and the common hard yellow cheese takes its name "Roumy" from the word for "foreign". Cheeses may be made from the milk of: buffaloes, cows, sheep, goat or camels. Although many rural people still make their own cheese, notably the fermented mish, today a growing quantity is produced in modern state-owned or private processing plants. Cheese is often served with breakfast, is included in several traditional main course dishes, and is an ingredient in some popular deserts. There is a range of different varieties of Egyptian cheese.

Cheese is thought to have originated in the Middle East. The manufacture of cheese is depicted in murals in Egyptian tombs from 2000 BC. Two alabaster jars found at Saqqara, dating from the First Dynasty of Egypt, contained cheese. These were placed in the tomb about 3000 BC. Probably they were fresh cheeses coagulated with acid or a combination of acid and heat. An earlier tomb, that of King Hor-Aha may also have contained cheese which, from the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the two jars, came from Upper Egypt and from Lower Egypt. The pots are similar to those used today when preparing mish. Cottage cheese was made in ancient Egypt by churning milk in a goatskin and then straining the residue using a reed mat. The Museum of Ancient Egyptian Agriculture displays fragments of these mats.

In the 3rd century BC there are records of imported cheese from the Greek island of Chios, with a twenty-five percent import tax being charged.

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