Did ancient Egyptians love cheese? Researchers found that a strange mass they found near a grave in the great ancient city of Alexandria appears to be the world's oldest solid cheese.

World’s Oldest Cheese

It was in 1885 that the tomb of Ptahmes was first discovered. However, it took over a century before researchers and archaeologists were able to return and when a group of archaeologists did between 2013 and 2014, they also discovered several broken jars, one of which contained a strange solid, powdery, and whitish mass as well as a canvass cloth that may have once covered the jar.

In a paper published in the journal Analytical Chemistry, the team of researchers from the University of Catania and Cairo University revealed that the mass appears to be a 3,000-year-old solid cheese. Upon analysis of the mass’s contents, they recognized some of the proteins to be of cow milk and either goat or sheep milk. And since the cloth would not have kept liquid dairy product in place, they surmised that the item in question appears to be solid dairy rather than a jar of very old milk.

Typically, this would be confirmed by analyzing the object’s fats, but years of rainfall as well as flooding from the Nile river contaminated the site and destroyed the mass of its fat contents. That said, even if evidences of cheese-making tools have been found in 7,000-year-old artifacts, the mass is the first and oldest large mass of solid cheese to be found.

‘Cursed’ Cheese?

Ancient artifacts are often associated with curses and this lump of cheese is no different, especially since it was found near the tomb of the city’s old mayor. In this case, however, the curse appears to be in the form of the bacterial proteins found in along with the mass.

While bacteria is an important part of the fermenting process of cheese, the bacteria the researchers found is of the unfriendly kind as they discovered it to have an infestation of Brucella melitensis, the bacteria responsible for the infectious disease brucellosis. Interestingly, even today, consuming unpasteurized or raw dairy is one of the most common ways to contract the disease.

Alexandria

The ancient city of Alexandria has long been written off by archaeologists and researchers because of the bustling and congested metro that has breached monuments and ancient works. In recent decades, however, researchers and archaeologists engaged in urban archaeology that slowly unearthed the city’s great past.

Just last month, archaeologists opened a mysterious sarcophagus which turned out to contain three skeletons swimming in reddish-brown sludge. They also previously found remains of Pharos, an ancient lighthouse, as well as remnants of the University of Alexandria.

However, because of changes in the flow of the Nile river as well as the rising sea levels, it is expected that large parts of Alexandria are underwater.