World's oldest cheese found in Egypt! .. How?

CAIRO, Aug 18 (SEE) - Archaeologists may have discovered the oldest cheese in the world at a tomb of a Pharaonic mayor, but the cheese couldn't be eaten, according to a report published by Analytical Chemistry scientific journal on Wednesday.

The discovery came after Egyptian and Italian researchers had found one jar contained a solidified whitish mass as well as canvas fabric that might have covered the jar or been used to preserve its contents.

The jar was found at a tomb of an Egyptian mayor of Memphis, who was called Ptahmes, during the 13th century BC. The tomb was earlier unearthed in 1885 and it was rediscovered again in 2010.

Enrico Greco, a chemical scientist at the University of Catania in Italy, and his colleagues wanted to analyze the whitish substance.

They found that it contains few recognizable bits of proteins including a mixture of cow and goat or sheep milk in addition to Brucella melitensis which is bacterium spreading from animals to people via the unpasteurized dairy product.

Greco told The Telegraph "This is the oldest solid cheese ever found."

"On the one hand, the mysterious white mass had been preserved because it was inside a sealed-off tomb which had itself existed in a normally very dry environment, in the Sahara," Greco told Haaretz. "But the fat content was destroyed by the highly "aggressive environment" over the last 30 centuries," he added.