Every child in your classroom comes to school with a history—ancestors and roots of his or her own. This background often has a great influence on the present circumstances of children. Even where they live today may have much to do with decisions that their forebears made many years ago. By delving further into family stories—those of your children and others that they will read about— the children will start to see links between their own lives and things that took place years before they were born.  

What Primary Sources Can Tell Us about Families Long Ago

Since time immemorial families have been passing down stories, culture and tradition to future generations. These in turn have been preserved in the form of keepsakes, relics, and other memorabilia.

• Written forms – Family stories and local histories have been passed down by people like griots and older relatives. Some histories also exist in the form of transcripts of interviews by those who witnessed personal, local, and world changes.
• Physical artifacts – Clues to family histories and traditions can be found in ethnic foods, homemade pottery, quilts, musical instruments, toys, and other ephemera that survive.
• Images – Much can be learned by studying old pictures and photographs depicting events big and small in the lives of families from days gone by.

 Primary Sources 

Egyptian Wall Painting of a Harvesting Scene from the Tomb of Sennedjem

Wall painting from the tomb of Sennedjem

Wall of Sennedjem’s tomb

The tomb of Sennedjem

Great Colonnade, Temple of Luxor

The tomb of Sennedjem was discovered by Italian archeologists in 1886 working on the west bank of the Nile River at Luxor (ancient Thebes). The scientists found the tomb undisturbed. It contained twenty mummies, furniture, and the tools of a skilled tomb worker – a cubit rod, a right angle, and a plumb level. The main occupant of the tomb is Sennedjem, a tomb worker who built and decorated royal tombs in the nearby Valley of the Kings. He lived during Egypt’s 19th Dynasty (13th century b.c.), during the reigns of Seti I and Rameses II. Scientists believe Sennedjem outfitted his own tomb. Every internal space is covered by paintings and hieroglyphics. The image depicts Sennedjem and his wife Iyneferty sowing, plowing, and harvesting wheat. Scientists believe the painting is intended to show them in the afterlife, dressed as they are in white, pleated cloth, enjoying a bountiful harvest. Today the tomb of Sennedjem and his family is the most frequently visited of the workmen's tombs.

Tutankhamen's tomb and burial chamber

 

 Background Information 

Bread in Ancient Egypt

Bread has been called a “staple of life.” This means that it is a basic ingredient of peoples’ diet. As this ancient Egyptian wall painting shows, this has been the case for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians, the first people known to cultivate wheat and barley, are also credited with being the first bakers. In this activity, the children will find out how bread was made then. They will then compare that with the process used today.

 

 Classroom Activity 

Bread Making Then and Now

1. Enlarge or pass around a photograph of 4,000 year-old bread. Ask the children if they have any ideas what it may be. Once you’ve solicited a number of responses, tell the children that it is a picture of a triangle-shaped loaf of bread that was baked in Egypt in about 2,000 B.C.

2. Ask the children if they have ever helped make a loaf of bread from scratch or if they have watched someone else do it. If so, ask them to describe the steps that were involved. Then tell the children that, in many ways, the steps are not all that different from those involved in making bread long ago when the loaf of bread in the picture you showed them was made. Write down each of these steps (the words in bold) on a chalkboard as you elaborate on what was involved in each step. (If you’d like, combine and thus shorten the number of steps for the children. For example, you might start with step d, after the wheat has already been grown.)

1. Plow the land.
2. Plant the seeds.
3. Water the seeds so that the grain will grow.
4. Cut and gather the wheat. (An instrument called a scythe was often used to do the cutting.)
5. Thresh the wheat. This means beating it in order to separate the chaff from the grain.
6. Winnow the grain and the chaff. In ancient Egypt that might simply mean throwing them up in the air. Much of the lighter chaff would then blow away.
7. Sift the wheat. This entails putting it in a simple dish with holes to remove any remaining chaff.
8. Mill the wheat. This means grinding it to make flour.
9. Make dough by combining the flour with water and a leaven that will help it rise.
10. Add flavoring to the dough if you like. Sesame seeds, honey, fruit such as dates, butter, eggs, oil and herbs are some of the items that were added.
11. Bake the bread. Closed ovens made from mud were used. Sometimes, when no oven was available, the Egyptians baked wafer thin bread on the hot sand instead.
12. Eat the bread. Be sure to share it with family, friends, and neighbors!

3. Distribute a copy of the wall painting from ancient Egypt to each child. (This can also be found on page 24 of your Primary Sources Handbook.) Ask the children which step(s) in the bread-making process they think the ancient Egyptians were trying to show when they made this wall painting. (In this picture the wheat is being cut and gathered.)

4. Organize the children into pairs, and assign each to a different step in the ancient Egyptian bread-making process. (Do not assign anyone to the process of cutting and gathering the wheat, as this is already illustrated in the primary source page that you distributed.)

5. Distribute art supplies (crayons, markers, and drawing paper) to each team of children. Using these, direct the children to draw their own “wall painting” of the step in the process that they were assigned. Encourage the children to refer to the Egyptian wall painting to get a sense of the art style used back in ancient Egypt—and to model it as much as possible.

6. In correct chronological order, have child pairs share their drawings with the class. When they’re done, if you’d like, share additional images from Egyptian wall paintings showing the grain harvesting process Children can then compare their own drawings with those made in days long ago.

7. Hold a class discussion about what the children have learned, focusing on a comparison between bread-making long ago and today. Use these questions to help you:

• In what ways do you think bread-making has changed since it was done in ancient Egypt?
• In which ways do you think bread-making is probably the same or similar to how it was done back then? Why do you think that is?
• What parts of bread-making do you think were most difficult to do in ancient Egypt? In what ways might these steps be easier today?
• In what ways do you think that what was learned about bread-making long ago has made a difference in our world today?

8. After the discussion, invite the children to create a classroom “time line” display of bread-making in ancient Egypt by combining their own “wall paintings” with the primary source Egyptian wall painting in correct chronological order.