Sarah Parcak: What the Egyptians did for us

Chris - There was a terrific programme the BBC made, a series they made a number of years ago called What Did the Victorians Do for Us? They looked at all of the incredible engineering. It occurred to me as I was watching that a lot of that we inherited from our forebears thousands of years ago. I suppose I put to you the question: what did the Egyptians do for us? As well as giving us this rich archaeological legacy, what things still exist today or techniques or doors were opened by the kind of science and maths and knowledge that these people had?

Sarah - Someone I've spent a lot of time studying – Cleopatra. To this day, she has an extraordinary influence on our world, on how we imagine the past and interpret the past and think about the role of women. I think they – maybe my colleagues who work in other cultures and other places would disagree with me – I think they gave us our bureaucracy. They really figured out layers and layers of organisation and management. If any of you have problems with your line managers and are having issues with bureaucracy and getting permits or permissions or a licence for something, I think you can blame the ancient Egyptians. They developed it there. Without that bureaucracy, the pyramids wouldn't have been built. What made the pyramids what they were – and still are to this day – was this whole system of management: of quarrying, of trade, of delivery, of workers’ health, food, managing estates in the Delta to produce enough beef to keep the workers fed. For me, I think it's bureaucracy. That's the real legacy of ancient Egypt in our world today.

Chris - It sounds like you've embraced a lot of their techniques. A little bird told me you're a very good baker. Is that true?

Sarah - Yeah, I love baking. This is something that actually started in Cambridge. I was a grad student. I was very lucky to have funding, but it wasn't a lot of money. I had to learn how to cook and how to bake. One of the lovely things about being at Cambridge then – I hope this tradition still continues – all of us were in the same boat: not a lot of money, just getting by. We would gather for a night or two a week, and everyone would bring a dish to share. Of course, you had people from all over the world, and you never knew what anyone would bring. It all worked out.

There were always a couple of starters, a couple of mains, and some desserts. I really just got into cooking and baking when I was there. Bless Barry – I wouldn't be where I am without him – but I think every single person who's ever been to Amarna would tell you the same thing, and that is that he was not concerned with food in the way that we are concerned with food. The grandfather of Egyptian archaeology is a guy named William Matthew Flinders Petrie. At the end of every season he worked in Egypt, from the 1880s onwards, he would bury all the cans that were left over. When he started his next season, he would dig the cans up and throw them against the wall, and the ones that didn't explode, he would eat. Barry carried on in that tradition. I could always rely on our dig seasons at Amarna to keep me trim and fit for the rest of the year. Obviously, the archaeology was wonderful, and he cared about us a great deal. Food was not a priority for him. I promised myself that if I ever ran my own projects, I would make sure that my team was well fed. I love baking and sharing treats with our neighbours. It's interesting too, because I think a lot about, in the work I do in the field, how did people feed themselves? How did they survive in all these places? It's just something else to connect the work I do to how I live today and what life was like a long time ago.

Chris - Because people have recreated some of the ancient recipes that that famous bureaucracy you reference led to being documented. There was food, there was drink, and people have tried to reinvent some of these recipes. Apparently, some of them are all right. Have you not gone down that path? 

Sarah - I haven't personally experimented with more ancient baking. Certainly, Dr Mark Lehner at Giza has done really amazing work partnering with bakers and brewers and trying to recreate ancient Egyptian beer, because, of course, that's most of what the workers would have consumed alongside bread. The bread would have been very, very dense and calorie-rich, and they would have needed those for their work. I remember one programme I did for the BBC, actually, when our son was – I think I was about three and a half, four months pregnant with him – filming a documentary on the Roman Empire. We were very lucky, we were working at a site in Tunisia, and the BBC had flown in this delightful woman whose name I cannot remember right now, I wish I could – and her expertise was baking and cooking in the Roman world. She brought all of these gorgeous reproduction Roman bowls into the field. She'd gone to a market in a village and gotten all this food, which was the same as the food that had been consumed 2,000 years before. She brought garum, which is the fish sauce that the Romans used – there are many different kinds of garum – and she had cooked these goat cutlets in garum. I'll never forget, I'd been a vegetarian for years, and the smell of these cutlets cooking on an open fire in this garum – I was at the point of my pregnancy where I was getting really hungry.

The team knew that I hadn't eaten meat, but a voice in my head said, you will eat all this meat right now. I think they had to cut it from the show because I was like a barbarian. I looked at the guys, who were all very excited about the meat, and said, I'm sorry, I'm eating all of this food. I was gnawing at it; there were juices running down my face. To this day, that will be the best thing I've ever eaten in my life. If she's listening right now, I apologise for not being able to remember your name. You're amazing. I've never thanked you properly. Since then, I've eaten meat. The people who do that work are extraordinary. I have such enormous respect for them.

Chris - Well, that's certainly food for thought and a wonderful thought to end on. Sarah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for telling us all about why you're a titan of science – and space science archaeology specifically.

Sarah - Thank you so much for having me. This has been wonderful.