and wine; olives were made into oil; figs, beans, and lentils were dried; and grains were stored for use throughout the year. An Israelite meal is illustrated by the biblical description of the rations that Abigail brought to David’s group: bread loaves, wine, butchered sheep, parched grain, raisins, and fig cakes (). Foods Grains and bread Grain products constituted the majority of the food consumed by the ancient Israelites. The staple food was bread, and it was such a vital part of each meal that the Hebrew word for bread, lehem, also referred to food in general. The supreme importance of bread to the ancient Israelites is also demonstrated by how Biblical Hebrew has at least a dozen words for bread, and bread features in numerous Hebrew proverbs (for example, , ). Bread was eaten at just about every meal and is estimated to have provided from 50 to 70 percent of an ordinary person’s daily calories. The bread eaten until the end of the Israelite monarchy was mainly made from barley flour; during the Second Temple period, bread from wheat flour become predominant. Porridge and gruel were made from ground grain, water, salt, and butter. This mixture also formed the basis for cakes, to which oil, called shemen, and fruits were sometimes added before baking. The Israelites cultivated both wheat and barley; these two grains are mentioned first in the biblical list of the Seven Species of the land of Israel and their importance as food is also seen in the celebration of the barley harvest at the festival of Shavuot and of the wheat harvest at the festival of Sukkot. Rice was introduced during the early Second Temple period through contact with the Persians. By the Roman period, rice had become an important export, and the Jerusalem Talmud states about rice that “there is none like it outside Israel,” and that notable rabbis served rice at the Passover seder. Barley Barley (hordeum vulgare) was the most important grain during the biblical period, and this was recognized ritually on the second day of Passover in the Omer offering, consisting of barley flour from the newly ripened crop. Furthermore, its significance to Israelite society, not only as a source of food, is illustrated by the biblical method for measuring a field by the amount of barley (rather than of wheat) with which it could be sown. Barley was initially predominant