Egypt - Bread and Revolution

Since ancient times, from the times of the pharaohs, wheat or an ancestor of its, and barley also, were the basis of the Egyptians' nutrition. The ancient Egyptians not only did have cultivated wheat, but they knew how to process and convert it into bread. The recipe of manufactured Egyptian bread has remained almost unchanged for thousands of years. The only question is if the ancient Egyptians were using an unleavened dough or a leavened one. Nowadays the ordinary Egyptian bread „Aish Masri” or „Aish Baladi” is made with dry yeast. Bread plays a central role in the diet of Egyptians - is consumed in the morning, at noon and evening, sometimes without accompany another dish, in very poor families. More than 40 percent of Egypt's 90 million people live on just 2 dolars a day. Bread, Aish, is rooted in the word „life”, „livelihood”, „sustenance”. Bread, for the ordinary Egyptian, means life. The Egyptian government has provided heavily subsidized bread for decades as a way to guarantee social peace. In 1977 Bread Riots occurred throughout Egypt, when the World Bank asked President Sadat not to grant subsidies for basic foodstuffs. When Egyptians took to the streets in 2011, their claims were „bread, freedom, social justice”. The first slogan of the Revolution was „bread”. The production of bread relies on massive imports of grain - Egypt is the largest importer of wheat in the world Today Egyptian bread is black and poor quality. The quality bread is 8 times more expensive in stores than the one sold on the street. Bread is a mirror of their standard of living. The paper aims to reveal how the bread shapes the relations between people and power in Egypt.