51 4 Photo of a Ukrainian grain freighter in the Bosporus (Turkey), 3 August 2022. Dependency on the supply of staple foods such as grain always has been and still is under threat, including from armed conflict. Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022 led to a blockade of the sea routes in the Black Sea. As part of an agreement between Turkey, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the United Nations in order to address the global food crisis, the cargo ship ‘Razoni’, which the day before had taken on board 26,000 tonnes of wheat in Odessa (Ukraine), was able to cross the Bosporus in Istanbul on 3 August 2022. the annona civica, was apparently to maintain social peace in the city (see pp. 57–58). There is archaeological evidence for grain storage from the level of local households to central storage facilities. The large facilities in the Near Eastern and Minoan and Mycenaean palaces from the 2nd millennium BCE, for example, are well preserved. They have many small chambers, just like the much younger (by two thousand years) Roman granaria and horrea that have been excavated in the city of Rome’s port of Ostia and in military camps (castra) and rural estates (villae rusticae). Roman authors such as Columella and Pliny give precise instructions on how to construct such storage facilities, so that they could store grain and other foodstuffs for long periods of time protected from damp and rodents. Models of granaries from Egyptian tombs are particularly instructive. The model found in the tomb of Gemniemhat in Saqqara is uncovered, allowing us to look in from above and see workers loading and measuring grain, as well as a scribe who is recording the information (fig. 6). The crucial importance of the grain supply can be seen in numerous images, especially from the private sphere. Tomb paintings from the Old Kingdom onwards (c. 2700–2200 BCE) show the cultivation, harvesting and storage of grain to show that the deceased would have enough to eat in the afterlife: in the tomb of Sennedjem in Deir el-Medina the husband is seen cutting corn, while his wife collects the ears in a basket. In the tomb of Nakht, the deceased official is shown twice: seated under a canopy, he supervises various agricultural activities that are depicted in detail, which, as the inscription tells us, took place on his own land (fig. 7).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTMyNjA1