In a 4,000-year-old tomb in the Luxor valley of the upper Nile, early 20th-century archaeologists discovered evidence of some of the things that mattered deeply to people of ancient Egypt: bread, beef and beer. 

At Wednesday’s Francestown Recreation Department lecture at Francestown Town Hall,  Catharine Roehrig, a curator emeritus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, told the story of the excavations of the tombs of Meketre and Wah, which yielded some of the most-important artifacts  in the Met’s entire Egyptian collection. 

Roehrig is retired and now lives in Francestown full-time. Her maternal grandparents owned an apple orchard in Francestown, and she has had a second home in town for many years. 

Bob Bitterli, chair of the Francestown Recreation Commission, said the commission was thrilled to have Roehrig speak to the group. Roehrig, who holds a doctorate in Egyptian archaeology form the University of California, Berkeley, is a specialist in the Middle Kingdom period of Egyptian history. She is the author of a children’s book, “Fun With Hieroglyphs,” and  “Mummies and Magic: Introduction of Egyptian Funerary Beliefs.” 

Explaining the extensive scope of Egyptian history, Roehrig joked that “it’s over 8,000 years of history to cover, so we all have to specialize.”

In 1920, a team from the Met excavated of the tombs of Meketre and Wah, two high-level administrators who served under the pharaohs Mentuhotep II and Amenemhat. The tombs are located in the Thebes Valley, on the west bank of the Nile across from Luxor. 

While the tomb of Meketre had been looted in ancient times, one storeroom, containing dozens of small wooden models depicting daily life and food production, was still sealed.  In the tomb of Wah, archaeologists discovered the remains of an urn which had contained beer. After the tomb was sealed, the beer continued to ferment, and fell over, spilling on the floor of the tomb. 

“When these tombs were discovered, everything had been a dark, dry place for 4,000 years. The container and the floor still had traces of 4,000-year-old yeast, which we have been able to analyze,” Roehrig said. “It is probably the precursor to a lot of the yeast we use today.” 

The tomb of Wah also contained fossilized loaves of bread and a foreleg of beef. 

Roehrig said that dating back to the turn of the last century, artifacts discovered in Egyptian excavations are “divvied up” between Egyptian and any foreign archaeologists working on the site, with Egypt receiving first pick of the discoveries.

“No one understand how important the tomb of Wah was at the time. It wasn’t filled with artifacts and art like the tomb of Meketre,” Roehrig said. “Then in 1939, the coffin was X-rayed, and it ended up containing the only metal funeral mask we have from this era and some of the only Middle Kingdom jewelry ever found.” 

Wah’s funeral mask is similar to the famous masks found in the tomb of King Tut. 

Roehrig noted that it is no longer necessary to unwrap mummies, as archaeologists are able to use CTE scans to image what is contained under the wrappings.

“Now, we can 3-D print the mummy from the imaging, and we can see exactly what is in there,” she said. 

Roehrig also spoke about the important role of women in the preparation of the tombs, as they wove the layers of linen sheets which wrapped the bodies. Roehrig was the first Egyptologist to put forth a theory of the explanations of ancient handprints and footprints discovered on the sheets.

“I believe these women left their mark on the sheets in these tombs of important people so their spirits could find their way there. They were ensuring that there spirits would get enough to eat in the afterworld, so that they could be in these tombs where people would bring offerings of food,” Roehrig said.

“Someone may prove me wrong in 50 years, but I don’t think so,” she added with a smile.