including food and drink—leading him to die of starvation. Now, thanks to some high tech research and some not-so-clean bowls and drinking vessels discovered in his tomb, we know that his subjects dined on a huge feast at his funeral that included barbecued goat, spicy lentil stew, and a wine-beer-mead punch.
Curt Beck, Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of Chemistry, and Edith Stout, research associate, were members of a team that analyzed ancient leftovers from a funeral feast discovered in the tomb of the legendary King Midas. According to the story in the New York Times (Thursday, December 23, 1999), the tomb was discovered in Turkey 42 years ago, but at the time archaeologists didn’t have the instrumentation or the analytical techniques to investigate the residues in cups, cooking pots, and serving dishes. Beck, Stout, and researchers at other laboratories used infrared spectroscopy, high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze samples of organic matter left in jars and bowls.
According to John Wilford, the Times reporter, “Scientists and other scholars at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology said the new findings provided, in the words of one ‘dramatic, direct evidence of ancient Mediterranean cuisine and custom.’”