ARCHEOLOGY : Ancient Bakery May Be Key to Egypt’s History : Discovery suggests Giza was no mere labor camp for pyramids’ construction but antiquity’s first big city.

The recent discovery of the remains of a 4,500-year-old bakery on the Giza Plateau may be a key element in determining the sociopolitical structure of Egypt in the 27th Century BC.

The bakery, along with a massive wall that cordoned off part of the site, suggests further that Egypt’s rulers also lived there for much of the year. This gives the scientists hope of finding a palace nearby.

Recently unearthed by University of Chicago archeologist Mark Lehner, the bakery provided bread for Egypt’s pharaohs and their minions while the Great Pyramids of the Giza Plateau were being constructed. It is one of a series of recent discoveries reinforcing the growing idea that Giza was not a rude labor camp used only for construction of the pyramids but rather--with perhaps as many as 200,000 residents--antiquity’s first large-scale, sophisticated city.

Of all the areas that could be excavated at Giza, those where Lehner is working “are potentially the most rewarding, for what they will tell us about the whole administrative structure of Egypt during the Fourth Dynasty,” which governed Egypt from 2680 BC to 2544 BC, said archeologist Kent Weeks of the American University in Cairo.

The strongest evidence that Lehner’s site is a royal installation is a recently discovered mammoth stone wall, 30 feet thick at the base and 30 feet high, that apparently surrounded the site.

The wall is “an astounding piece of work,” Weeks said. Lehner believes that the wall was “a royal statement” that separated the divine world of the pharaohs from the everyday world of the workers. The bakery was found inside the wall in a complex of storerooms and administrative offices.

Archeologists already knew much about the process of baking bread in Egypt because the steps are shown in a frieze on a wall of the tomb of King Ty, a Fifth Dynasty ruler. The discovery of the bakery represents “the first time the archeological equivalent of such a scene has been found,” said Lehner, whose work is sponsored primarily by Los Angeles investor Bruce Ludwig.

On one side of each room in the bakery were large bowls, perhaps a yard in diameter, in which the bread was mixed. The dough was then placed in baking pots that were stacked in an open hearth on the opposite side of the room.

Remnants of grains found in the area suggest that the chief ingredient was barley, which would have produced a dense, dark loaf.

Lehner is now searching for the supporting facilities that should have accompanied the bakery, including a pottery-making shed, grinding and sieving rooms and storage sheds.

The team has also been looking for a brewery, since such facilities are believed to have been closely associated with bakeries. Beer and bread were staples in the Egyptian diet.

An even greater treasure--the palace--may lie nearby. The site is “close to the quarries, close to the work site, close to the administrative centers of Egypt,” said Weeks. “This is the area I would definitely pick.”

Culinary Clues to the Past

A University of Chicago archeologist has discovered a bakery that was used about 5,000 years ago, at the time the pyramids of Giza were under construction. The discovery confirms the accuracy of a frieze discovered long ago on the wall of a tomb. Portions of a drawing of the frieze, at right, illustrate the ancient baking process.

1. Kneading and mixing the dough in large, shallow bowls 2. Dumping the mixture into smaller baking bowls 3. Stacking the baking bowls in open-fire oven and emptying the baked bread.