How did the ancients use sesame?

By Chelsie Vandaveer

January 6, 2003

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John Gerard (1597) believed, wrongly, the sesame (Sesamum orientale Linnaeus) to be a pulse, a member of the pea and bean family. Although the plant was well-known to the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians since ancient times, Gerard had no first-hand knowledge of sesame, "It is a stranger in England. [W]e are constrained for want of an English name to use the Latine: it is unknowne to the Apothecaries, especially the plant it selfe...."

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John Gerard admitted, "Men do not greedily feed of it alone, but make cakes thereof with honey...it is also mixed with bread...." Begele Traditional Arabic Bread with Sesame Seeds, Jaffa Gate, Old City, Jerusalem, Israel Photographic Print by  Eitan Simanor Buy Photographic Print at AllPosters.com

Gerard felt that sesame seeds could not possibly be healthy to eat. Sesame, he wrote, "...speedily filleth and stuffeth up those that feed thereof, and overthroweth the stomacke, and is slow of digestion, and yeeldeth to the body a fat nourishment: therefore it is manifest that it cannot strengthen the stomack, or any part thereof..." But he admitted, "Men do not greedily feed of it alone, but make cakes thereof with honey...it is also mixed with bread...."

For his treatise on sesame, Gerard depended upon first century writers: Dioscorides (Greek), Pliny (Roman), and Columella (Spanish). "[I]t is a remedie against bruises of the eares, inflammations, burnings and scalding, paines of the joints, and biting of the poysonsom horned serpent called Cerastes. Being mixed with oile of Roses it takes away the head-ache which commeth of heate....Of the herb is made an oile used of the Egyptians, which as Pliny saith is good for the eares. It is a remedie against the sounding and ringing...."

Sesame was "one of the Sommer grains", but planted the previous fall and in accordance with astronomical events, "...is sowne before the rising of the seven starres (Pleiades), as Pliny writeth; yet Columella saith, that Sesamum must be sowne after the Autumne Equinoctial, against the Ides of October...." (The Herbal or General Historie of Plants, 1633 edition)

The Institute for Systematic Botany, University of South Florida has a great close-up of Sesamum orientale taken by Walter Hodge. To view the photograph, click on the link:

http://www.plantatlas.usf.edu/images.asp?plantID=1454

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge the image.

killerPlants Tendrils: ~~1~~2~~3~~4~~5~~

Suggested Reading:

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