Lettuce’s scientific classification lactuca sativa, is derived from the Latin word for milk and shares the same root as lactose, the sugar enzyme found in dairy products. When the butt of modern Romaine lettuce is cut off, a similar substance oozes from the plant and gives it a bitter flavor.
“But if you broke off a leaf it oozed a sort of white-ish, milky substance-basically it looked like semen.” “One of the reasons why associated the lettuce with Min was because it grows straight and tall-an obvious phallic symbol,” Ikram says. Behind him, a procession of priests holds a small garden of lettuce. Min is also sometimes depicted wearing a long, red ribbon around his forehead that some say represents sexual energy. This relief, from the funerary temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu, for example, depicts Min’s harvest festival. Image courtesy of Flickr user kairoinfor4u. This relief from the funerary temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu depicts the festival of Min. in the The White Chapel of Senusret I, though there may be earlier examples, Ikram says. The first of these depictions appeared around 1970-80 B.C. “Over 3,000 years, role did change, but he was constantly associated with lettuce,” she says. Salima Ikram, Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo who specializes in Ancient Egyptian food explains Min’s part in lettuce history. The plant was believed to help the god “ perform the sexual act untiringly.” (It is unclear whether the lettuce’s development in Egypt predates its appearance on the island of Kos.) The god, often pictured with an erect penis in wall paintings and reliefs was also known as the “great of love” as he is called in a text from Edfu Temple. Lettuce has been harvested for millenia-it was depicted by ancient Egyptians on the walls of tombs dating back to at least 2,700 B.C. The earliest version of the greens resembled two modern lettuces: romaine, from the French word “ romaine” (from Rome), and cos lettuce, believed to have been found on the island of Kos, located along the coast of modern day Turkey.īut in Ancient Egypt around 2,000 B.C., lettuce was not a popular appetizer, it was an aphrodisiac, a phallic symbol that represented the celebrated food of the Egyptian god of fertility, Min. The Ptolemaic king stands before Min, the ithyphallic god of fertility, and offers him the eye of Horus.
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