Bread Baked 560 B. C.

1895

The stalest bread on record is an Assyrian loaf which has been discovered by a French explorer, M. Monthon. This loaf is supposed to have been leavened and baked about the year 560 B. C. It is round, not unlike the common bun in shape and in color of a delicate brown. It is, we understand, in perfect condition, having been found, along with the remnants of several similar loaves, wrapped in cloth, in a tightly sealed sarcophagus, the custom being quite common in Assyria, as in Egypt, to inclose food in the tombs of the illustrious dead. M. Monthon has offered this curiosity, we hear, to the British museum authorities. — Invention.