What can cheese tell us about life in the past?. In this post, you will find the YouTube video exploring what cheese reveals about ancient rituals and a full video transcript (with relevant sources and links).

YouTube Video

YouTube Video Transcript

Here, you will find the complete transcript of the video in the previous section with hyperlinked references/citations.

Intro

During the late 20th and early 21st centuries CE, a seemingly simple item became the centerpiece of gatherings around the world: the charcuterie board. It was adorned with meats, fruits, nuts, and – of course – cheese. It wasn’t just food, it was a ritual in itself. 

But cheese’s ritual life goes back much further in time. While we know ancient people did make cheese, we still have a lot of questions like, “what is cheese fighting?” and “why did some people bury themselves with cheese?”

Hi, I’m Dr. Smiti Nathan, and I’m an archaeologist. In this video, we’ll explore the curious ritual life of cheese in the past, so let’s get into it.

Hittites

Let’s start with the Hitittes. The Hittite culture spanned from around 1650-1200 BCE in areas of modern-day Turkey. Our evidence for cheese’s ritual life in this ancient Anatolian culture comes from tablets written in the Hittite language. Their language used cuneiform script. Cuneiform was an ancient writing system used to write several languages, including Akkadian and Sumerian. It possessed very recognizable wedge-shaped signs that could represent either syllables or logograms, which represent either a word or an idea. Hittite writings indicate that sacrifices or offerings of cheese were considered to be ritual tasks in religious rites. 

Cheese offerings were included in ritual rites for various deities. For example, when water springs dried up, a ritual was performed. Someone would go to a spring hole and offer cheese to appease the weather god and persuade him to return with the rain. 

There also seems to have been a ritual game played at Hittite festivals, which can be translated to “cheese fighting”. According to scholar Michele Cammarosano’s  analysis of Hittite texts that detail the sport, there seem to have been four key steps in a typical cheese fight sequence.

First, there was cheese squeezing/pressing. Cammarosano thinks that likely refers to a soft cheese that was pressed to remove fluid, resulting in a consistency that could be shaped into an object for the later fight. 

Second, there was a cheese presentation to the gods, which he assumes was for a blessing of some sort.

Third, there was cheese distribution to the people. We’re not entirely sure if this was a symbolic or literal distribution of cheese before the next step. 

Finally, the last step is for “the young to fight with cheese”. It seems cheese was used as part of the fight, but we’re not entirely sure how. Some theories include throwing balls of cheese at one another or fashioning the cheese into some sort of other weapon. 

Personally, I can’t help imagine something that’s a cross between a snowball fight, cowboy Western duel, and a wrestling match. Whatever way cheese fighting looked like, it seemed to have been an integral festival sporting event, and gives us more insight into Hittite rituals that include cheese. 

In addition, Hittite texts might also give us some information on cheese production at this time. The word for cheese in these Hittite records was usually qualified with other terms indicating characteristics of the cheeses: including words we’re translating as, “large”, “crumbled”, “scoured” or “finished”, and “aged soldier.”

The terms “scoured” or “aged” might indicate the development or use of rennet in the cheesemaking process at this point. Rennet is a set of enzymes produced in the stomach of certain mammals that people have used in cheese production. According to one translation, a term possibly meaning “rennet” appears in Hittite texts around 1400 BCE. This might be the earliest reference to the use of rennet to make cheese.

But translation is a problem with Hittite texts since Hittite borrowed words from other languages used at the time. So while the presence of a word resembling “rennet” is exciting, we can’t be entirely sure it meant the same thing in Hittite as it might in Akkadian or later languages. Still, these clues point to a deeper story where cheese was not just eaten, but woven into ritual life.

Ancient Greece

And the Hittites weren’t the only ancient society to offer cheese to their deities. If we go to ancient Greece, the Mycenaeans also included cheese in a list of offerings given to gods. Let’s look at Ancient Linear B texts, which was a syllabic script used for writing Mycenaean Greek. These text indicate that foodstuffs, including cheese, were offered in palace sanctuaries to gods such as Poseidon, the god of the sea,. So cheese in the Bronze Age Greek world played a dual role as a basic food for rural people and as a prestige good for temples and the elite.

We also find mentions of ancient Greek cheese in epic stories. Cheese is mentioned in Homer’s 8th-century BCE “The Odyssey.”  On his journey home after the Trojan war, Odysseus encounters various mythological creatures, including the one-eyed giant, Polyphemus – who happens to be one of Poseidon’s children. Let’s take a look at some excerpts from one translation:

“We soon were at the cave, but did not find the Cyclops; he was pasturing his flocks. We went inside and looked at everything. We saw his crates weighed down with cheese, and pens crammed full of lambs divided up by age: the newborns, middlings, and those just weaned. There were well-crafted bowls and pails for milking, all full of whey. My crew begged, ‘Let us grab some cheese and quickly drive the kids and lambs out of their pens and down to our swift ships, and sail away across the salty water!’”

Later, Polyphemus returns to the cave: 

“He sat, and all in order milked his ewes and she-goats, then he set the lambs to suck beside each bleating mother. Then he curdled half of the fresh white milk, set that aside in wicker baskets, and the rest he stored in pails so he could drink it with his dinner.”

Personally, I really love that these kinds of details are mentioned in the Homeric text. Now, if you’re wondering what kind of cheese the Odyssey was mentioning, we’re not too sure. While we know that feta is often the most popular cheese associated with this region in modern time, the ancient Greek word for cheese in this text is τυρός and could refer to a wide range of cheeses. 

While this story definitely demonstrates the desire for cheese shared by humans and a cyclops, it could also tell us something about how certain cheeses were made and preserved in a time before refrigeration. In fact, we have historical evidence from around the world that cheese-makers stored cheese in cool caves, so this practice could have been happening for millennia. 

In addition to Bronze Age Mycenaeans, later Iron Age Greeks also included cheese offerings in their gifts to deities. Inscriptions found throughout Greece at various temples list cheese as one of the offerings made to deities. Excavations in the 1930s at the Acropolis in Athens unearthed marble inscriptions that were part of two altars built on the site around 500 BCE. These inscriptions provided detailed lists of sacrifices for the various deities in the Eleusinian cult, including: “barley-corn and -meal, beans, sesame (?), oil, wine, cheese and honey.”

In addition, the 4th-century Greek writer Xenophon tells us that cheese offerings were frequently pilfered from the temple of Artemis by Spartan schoolboys as part of their training to become soldiers.

In the ancient Greek world, cheese was not just food. It could also serve as a ritual offering that bridged the everyday and the divine.

Ancient Egypt

Now, so far, we’ve talked about textual sources that mention cheese. However, we do find actual material remains of cheese in the archaeological record in an unlikely place. Now, when you think of cheese, you might not immediately think of death – unless you’re lactose intolerant. But, some of the most compelling cheese artifacts actually come from burials.

Let’s start with ancient Egypt.

Now, when it comes to funerary rites and rituals, ancient Egyptians, who could afford it, would have been provided with various items as they transitioned into the afterlife. These items could include coffins, masks, furniture, jewelry, amulets, and food. Food was equally important to the Egyptians in the afterlife as it was on earth.

Food offerings were included in texts known as “Offering Lists.” Offering Lists, also known as the offering formula, were magical texts found on tomb walls and coffins that ensured a continual supply of offerings to the deceased. So if the mortuary cult for a specific tomb stopped bringing offerings, the Offering Lists magically provided an eternal supply of food. Such texts began with the phrase “An offering that the king gives” and then listed all of the offerings. These were usually food, such as the ubiquitous beer and bread offering, but also included other things, such as fine linen.

Food offerings were also physically deposited within tombs, and we have found archaeological examples of this! For example, Egyptologist Salima Ikram details a funerary meal that was found in a 2nd Dynasty (2890–2686 BCE) princess’s tomb at Saqqara (Saqqara Tomb 3477). This tomb (Tomb 3477) was discovered during excavations in the late 1930’s (1936-1939). This meal was found laid out on the tomb floor next to the burial pit. The food was so well preserved in the tomb that its contents were, for the most part, all identifiable! Although many alabaster and diorite plates and bowls were discovered in the tomb, the funerary meal was served on ceramic dishes. The meal included “quail, barley porridge, pigeon stew, grilled fish, a joint of beef and beef ribs, kidneys, bread, wine, fruit and cheese…” There was also cake for dessert.

Now the Saqqara cheese find is pretty amazing, but it’s not even the oldest cheese artifact in ancient Egypt. That was found a few kilometers away from Saqqara. In 2010, excavations by Cairo University unearthed a previously discovered tomb, which had been covered by sand at the end of the 19th century.

This tomb belonged to the mayor of Memphis, Ptahmes, who lived approximately 3,200 years ago during the 19th Dynasty. Ptahmes was a high-ranking official during the reigns of Seti I and Ramses II. In his tomb, excavators discovered a large broken pot containing a “solidified whitish mass” and canvas fabric, which might have been used to cover the jar. This whitish mass was likely cheese!

Proteomic analysis revealed certain peptides and proteins, indicating the cheese would have been made by mixing cow and sheep/goat milk. This analysis further revealed that no peptides or proteins from Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens, which is the usual signature characteristic for kefir or kefir-like fermentation, were found. 

We’ll talk about kefir a bit more later, but what this means is that the cheese probably would have tasted quite acidic if you bit into it. Hopefully, Ptahmes would have enjoyed his punchy cheese snack in the afterlife. Overall, ancient Egypt’s cheese artifacts show us that foods like cheese, held meaning beyond life and into the afterlife.

Taklamakan Desert

Next, let’s go to the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin in present-day northwestern China. About 20 years ago, several small hunks of cheese were discovered scattered around the necks of individuals found in three tombs in the Xiaohe cemetery. These pieces of cheese are approximately 3,500 years old, making them the oldest remains of cheese discovered so far. But there’s even more to this find.

Analysis of the ancient DNA from these hunks of cheese demonstrated that they were made from kefir. Kefir is a traditional beverage of sour, thin yogurt, still drunk today throughout the region and in many other regions. The cheese would have been made by straining kefir milk. The lumps of kefir could be used to ferment kefir milk into new kefir cheese, similar to how rennet ferments milk in many European cheesemaking traditions.

Mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) identified both bovine and caprine milk were used to produce this specific kefir cheese. However, unlike certain Greek and West Asian cheeses that used a blend of cow and sheep/goat milk, these cheese pieces found in the Tarim Basin graves were not mixed. Instead, the milks were likely used in different batches of cheese. However, the scientists say more data is needed to corroborate this.

Still, these hunks of cheese also help us understand the development and production of this kind of cheese. Previous studies have shown that kefir cheese spread from the Northern Caucasus to Europe and elsewhere, but this study shows a possible second route spread from Xinjiang to inland East Asia (i.e., Tibet and the Gan-Qing area). So this study shows two strands of kefir cheeses and two different geographical origins for the cheese: “one in Xinjiang and one in the Caucasus.”

These ancient cheese artifacts suggest that kefir cheese wasn’t just part of the everyday diet. Such cheese may have also held ritual or symbolic significance in the burial practices of these communities.

Fellow archaeology YouTubers also reported on this find:

• 10 Best Archaeology Discoveries of 2024 – Inside Archaeology
• Oldest Cheese in the World Found on Mummies in China – Dig It With Raven

Neolithic Europe

Now when it comes to cheese artifacts, finding actual bits of cheese like we did in ancient Egypt and in the Tarim Basin is not exactly common. When visible cheese remains are lacking, archaeologists can turn to another artifact to help locate cheese. 

Let’s go to Neolithic Central Europe. According to scholars, the development of dairying was a technological breakthrough during that period. This was because nutritious food, including cheese, could be made from animal by-products without killing the animal. 

In modern-day Poland, researcher Melanie Salque and her team decided to analyze ceramics used by central European communities during the early Neolithic period (approximately 5,400-4,800 cal. BCE) to learn more about cheese during this time. 

The production of cheese is technologically complex. Milk first needed to be coagulated, either by using enzymes or acid. The liquid whey would then be strained, leaving the semi-solid curds behind. So ceramics can provide clues into different parts of the cheese-making process, from straining to storage. In fact, milk residues had already been found in pottery vessels in northwestern Anatolia dating to the 7 mill BCE, but this could have been a range of dairy products. 

Going back to Central Europe, beginning in the 6th millennium BCE, pot sherds with pierced holes began to appear at early Neolithic European sites. These vessels are part of a larger pottery assemblage known as Linear Pottery, or Linearbandkeramik. Previous scholars have interpreted these strainers as cheese strainers, but other scholars have proposed they were flame covers, honey strainers, or beer making vessels. 

Salque and her team analysed a selection of these potsherds from vessels pierced with small holes from sites in the region of Kuyavia, Poland. While there were theories linking certain pottery with processing milk, their study provided direct evidence for this. But as we mentioned before, just because you have milk doesn’t automatically mean you have cheese. So how did Salque and her team know they might be seeing cheese? 

They used gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, and isotopic analysis on residue samples. They found a lot milk fat and when they compared those amounts to what you might find in modern cheese strainers, it was pretty comparable. So they think this is strong evidence that these vessels were used to separate curds from whey during the cheese-making process.

This work demonstrates that even without visible cheese remains, the technological and cultural importance of early cheesemaking can still be uncovered through the traces it left behind.

Ancient South Asia

Now vessels with holes, like those found in Poland, have also been found at 3rd-millennium BCE Harappan sites in the ancient Indus.

Some scholars have proposed the possibility that the Harappan civilization may have exported dried cheese to the Arabian Peninsula in ceramic pots. Other scholars have suggested that these perforated pots could have been used for the production of other dairy products like butter. 

It was only relatively recently that residue analysis was undertaken on a sample of such vessels through a study led by archaeologist Akshyeta Suryanarayan. The team found that over half of the ceramics contained lipid residues, indicating that animal fats of some sort were present. However, analysis also revealed that other types of fats may have been present as well. The research team believes that the primary purpose of the vessels they sampled was likely not dairy processing, but rather that such pottery could have had multiple functions.

And as we mentioned before, just because you have milk doesn’t automatically mean you have cheese. So in ancient South Asia, the archaeological data yielded from ceramics suggesting cheese making is limited. However, cheese does show up in another source: the Vedas. These are sacred Hindu texts, which were written after the collapse of the Harappan civilization beginning in 1500 BCE. These texts outline the process of curdling milk by adding sour milk, similar to using a starter culture to “acid-coagulate” milk to make fresh cheese. The Vedas also mention other ways of curdling milk by adding various types of plants such as “the bark of the palash tree, the fruit of the kuvala (jujube), and putika.” If these plants contained such rennet-like enzymes, then the Vedas would be one of the earliest references to enzymatic cheeses.

So what kinds of cheeses were made? The Vedas mention two types of possible cheeses: one being called dadhanvat, including one with holes and one without and another, which was a type of fresh cheese, possibly similar to paneer.

These texts, as well as later Buddhist and Jainist texts, stress the importance of curds and fresh cheeses in this region. An aversion to aged-cheeses might be related to the revered status of cows, which could have discouraged the development of animal rennet. Furthermore, the lack of plant-based rennet might be attributed to the food purity principles outlined in the Vedas, but this is still somewhat speculative.

So while direct evidence remains limited, both archaeology and early texts suggest that possible cheesemaking in ancient South Asia centered on fresh curds, shaped by regional beliefs, resources, and ritual practices.

Bronze Age Italy

Now the strainer ceramics in ancient Harappa and Neolithic Europe were not the only cheese-related vessels in the past. Let’s go to Italy in the Bronze Age.

Ceramic vessels, known as “milk boilers,” were used to make sure the milk didn’t froth and boil over (the way it does when making a cappuccino) during the cheese-making process. These cheeses were produced using acid/heat coagulation and milk needed to be heated to high temperatures. 

There were two types of milk boilers used. One type, predominantly used in northern Italy, had an inverted funnel-shaped design. The other type, more common in southern Italy, had a candle-stick-shaped design. 

So what types of cheeses did this process produce? Scholars believe that this process led to the development of ricotta-type cheeses in this region beginning in the Bronze Age (ea-late second mill BCE).

During the first millennium BCE, the use of these milk boilers declined sharply and by the 7th century BCE , bronze, and sometimes silver, cheese graters (like this one) began to appear in elite tombs from Southern Campania to northern Etruria. These new tools found in elite tombs point to the emergence of hard-grating cheeses. these Etruscan bronze cheese graters would become an “essential tool of the Roman kitchen.”

In addition to changing tools, cheese-making practices at this time shifted from acid/heat coagulation to rennet-coagulation and 

Artifacts like milk boilers and cheese graters reveal how cheesemaking in this region evolved from fresh curds to aged cheeses, reflecting shifts in technology and taste.

Outro

Uncovering the traces of ancient cheese helps us better understand the role food played in ritual, identity, and daily life. Ancient texts, scientific analyses, and archaeological artifacts offer glimpses into how cheese was made, used, and valued across cultures. From ancient Anatolia to Bronze Age Italy, cheese was both present and meaningful.

Now if you’re interested in learning about another ancient food that sometimes makes an appearance on charcuterie boards, check out this video here. That’s all for this video, and we’ll catch you in the next one! Bye!

Credits

Brooke Norton: Co-Producer, Researcher, Scriptwriter

Noor Hanania: Lead Video Editor

Anya Gruber: Peer Reviewer

Smiti Nathan: Director, Co-Producer, Support Video Editor, Researcher, Scriptwriter

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Nancy Fulton, James D., Giancarlo Annese, Thomas Martin, Stuart A. Griffin, Tagg, Ann Brookens, Diana Madden

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