The oldest piece of cheese found in Egyptian tomb
The
most ancient solid cheese was discovered in a broken jar inside a 13th
century BC Egyptian tomb belonging toPtahmes, mayor of Memphis. The discovery
was reported in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry.
On analysis of the white colored piece of matter found in the tombwith liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry, it was identified as a dairy product made from cow milk and sheep or goat milk, a piece of cheese.
Other peptides in the food sample also suggested that it was contaminated with Brucellamelitensis, a bacterium that causes brucellosis. This potentially deadly disease spreads from animals to people, typically from eating unpasteurized dairy products. Thus, the sample seems to represent the earliest reported biomolecular evidence of the brucellosis disease.
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