Yesterday, we left a garden with a fig tree as tall as a house to catch a train to Rome Termini station, where tiny, thrill-seeking figs grow on the tracks. The fearless fig tree is a descendant of the prehistoric wild caprifig, which spread from Caria (hence the species name carica) in ancient Anatolia, across the Mediterranean. Cultivation is thought to have started in Egypt and the Levant, probably between 4000 and 2700BC; particular evidence of this is the common fig (Ficus carica) on the stone walls within ancient Egyptian tombs called mastaba, painted so their occupants could enjoy the fruit in the afterlife.
Dozens of examples are described in a research paper by the professor of Egyptology Noha Hany Gerges Salama, including paintings within a fifth-dynasty mastaba of Iymery, in Giza. One painting in particular depicts two fig trees, both of which have a boy standing in their branches and picking fruit, while men under the trees collect fallen figs in baskets. Another exquisite painting shows two men seated opposite each other, one of whom is holding a plate holding three enormous figs. Salama notes what a common food source fresh and dried figs were in ancient Egypt, and used often to enhance flavour and sweeten, but also how figs, their leaves and the sap from the branches provided a natural rennet for cheese-making and yeast for wine-making.
