Gros Noir d’Hiver and Young Woman At A Window Pealing Radishes

Gros Noir d’Hiver is another name for winter radish. Can you imagine that among the hobbies of nobleman at the French court was breeding ? And even more weird, the plant they were interested in was a simple winter radish they named many aristocratic names? French revolution of course didn’t have inclination for such frivolities and so we can eat only simple winter radish now. Which relates us to the Egiptian workmen on pyramids, in a sense, as radishes were their food, too. Herodotus wrote about it ,leaving the question how similar to the slaves are we today up to us……

Citation: Many noblemen in the French court bred different varieties, so many types of radishes had aristocratic names. In the fallout of the French Revolution these names were dropped, causing even more confusion when trying to trace how certain modern radishes are related to the older ones. from: http://academics.hamilton.edu/foodforthought/Our_Research_files/radishes.pdf

On the pyramid it is declared in Egyptian writing how much was spent on radishes and onions and leeks for the workmen, and if I rightly remember that which the interpreter said in reading to me this inscription, a sum of one thousand six hundred talents of silver was spent; and if this is so, how much besides is likely to have been expended upon the iron with which they worked, and upon bread and clothing for the workmen, seeing that they were building the works for the time which has been mentioned and were occupied for no small time besides, as I suppose, in the cutting and bringing of the stones and in working at the excavation under the ground?
Read more: http://www.touregypt.net/herodotuskhufu.htm#ixzz2srfzyWaZ