I recall standing in front of a large chunk of an ancient Egyptian memorial tablet. Carved and then painted into the stone was a picture of a priest standing in front of a small altar on which were various flasks of alabaster and a series of loaves of bread looking like a row of baguettes all standing up. Above the altar they stood upright, as if floating, with their tips pointing to the skies and the ends pointing to the altar and floor below. The priest offering the bread and flasks wore a stiff white kilt, and behind on his back and waist a panther skin, the symbol of the priesthood.
This is an offering to the dead. The Egyptians believed that after this life, the righteous dwelt in the Land of the Beautiful West, along with their wives and favorite cats. But they still needed sustenance and eternity was a long time. In earlier phases of Egyptian history, the task of placing the food on a funerary altar fell to the sons of the departed. But over the generations, the Egyptian nobility learned that later generations could not be counted on to feed their ancestors. They therefore had the offerings painted on the walls with spells to make the offerings real in the afterlife. The loaves were depicted in the air, not because they cold fly, but so that they could be counted. They also went to hiring the panther skin-clad priesthoods to keep the offerings going forever.
The Egyptian custom of making a sacrifice for the feeding of the dead was not common in the ancient near east. In ancient Babylon and Assyria, loaves of bread were placed or stacked on ceremonial altars before the statue of the god in order to feed the divinity, and not the dead. The gods got meat as well in the form of animal blood sacrifice, but just as a meal without bread was unthinkable for the peoples of Mesopotamia, so too it was in the feeding of the gods. How did the gods eat their food? It was burnt on a fire altar and the smoke took it up to the skies where the gods inhaled it.
Bread was popular in the whole of Mesopotamia, which is not a surprise, given that the people there invented it. The stable food, at least for the upper classes, was meat stew and ancient clay tables give a considerable number of recipes. In the days before cutlery, the bread could be used as a scoop to eat the stew and then wipe down the bowl to get every last morsel. For all classes, bread was a daily staple and over 300 flavors existed. Unlike the Egyptian baguettes, the peoples of Babylon and Assyria liked to make round, flat loaves, the same shape as a large pancake. It was baked without fat, just water, salt, yeast and flour, and baked in a community oven. Iraqi flat bread, khubuz mei, is made the same way today.
Nestled uncomfortably between Egypt and Mesopotamia was ancient Israel, and here bread sacrifice takes a twist. The Torah commands that 12 loaves of bread be placed on an altar in the northern section of the Temple in Jerusalem. These were replaced every Sabbath by fresh loaves and the priests were entitled to eat the now stale bread offerings. But the bread did not go to feed the Hebrew God, because He did not need to eat anything. Making offerings of bread or anything else to the dead was absolutely forbidden to the Hebrews.
Twelve unleavened loaves were to be placed on the special altar table, made of fine flour, each of which weighed a little less than 5 pounds. The Mishnah adds more details about the shape of the loaves, but this was not compiled until about 200 B.C., long after the Biblical texts. According to Josephus, the breads were arranged in two piles rather than in rows, but he lived in the first century A.D.
The placing of bread before the Ark of the Covenant and later the Temple is an early tradition. The best description of it is in Leviticus 24:6-9, where we read, “You shall take bran flour and bake it into twelve cakes, using two tenths of an ephah of flour for each cakes. These you shall place in two piles, six in each pile, on the pure gold table before the Lord. With each pile put some pure frankincense, which shall serve as an oblation to the Lord, a token of the bread offering. Regularly on each sabbath day the bread shall be set out before the Lord on behalf of the Israelites by an everlasting covenant. It shall belong to Aaron and his sons, who must eat it in a sacred place, since it is most sacred, his as a perpetual due from the oblations to the Lord.”
These bread offerings are mentioned a number of times in the scriptures but not explained in detail. In the First Book of Samuel 25:1-6, we meet the famished David and his troops, who are allowed to eat it only when he explains to the priests that his men have not been with women, that is in a state of ritual impurity. The altar on which the bread is placed is described in some detail, but the bread is mentioned in Exodus 25:30. Grain offerings are discussed in more detail in Leviticus 2, although it is not clear if this passage is about the Bread of the Presence or the treatment of private grain offerings. 1 Chronicles 9:32 tells us that special priests, the Kohathites, had the task of preparing the bread.
But if the bread is not being offered for the dead or to feed the deity as in cultures contemporary with Israel, what was its purpose? Perhaps the number 12 is our clue, the number of the tribes of Israel. Further, the Hebrew name for the bread was lechem haPānīm, which is normally rendered in English as “Bread of the Presence” but it can also be translated as the “Bread of the Faces.” Perhaps they believed that it was a liturgical reminder that the people always stood in the Face, or the presence, of God, or alternatively that He was always with these 12 tribes.
That would be a good reminder for any people of any nation, that we are never forgotten.
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Professing Faith: Bread one way the faithful honored their dead and their god - Redlands Daily Facts
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