Pelusium Fish-Sauce Works

Pelusium

Garum FactoryAegyptus · Tell el-Farama, EgyptBuilt 259 BCE

About

Guarding Egypt's easternmost Nile mouth, Pelusium ran a fish-salting and garum trade old enough to appear in a customs papyrus from 259 BCE, centuries before Trajan. Egyptian and British excavators later uncovered round and square processing tanks built for exactly this purpose, physical proof behind the papyri. The port taxed and shipped salted fish and sauce alongside grain and beer, making it one of the empire's steadiest eastern suppliers of the condiment. Its position on the coastal road guaranteed the product reached both Alexandria and the Levant.

What happened here

Rows of stone vats sunk into the ground beside the sea, and the smell reaches a long way inland. Small fish and the guts of larger ones are layered with salt and left in the sun for weeks; the liquid that separates off is drawn away as fish sauce and the residue is sold cheaply as paste. Grades run from a luxury sauce that costs more than good wine down to the version bought by everyone else. Tunny is netted in season from lookout towers on the headland, and the fishing, salting, potting and shipping all happen within a few hundred metres. Amphorae are stamped with the maker's name. Towns built on this are rich, and they are built downwind of themselves.