Having been aged for around 3,200 years, the world’s oldest solid cheese has been discovered in Egypt.

Dr Enrico Greco and his colleagues of the University of Catania, in Italy, tested a mass – originally thought to be soap which was found in a tomb in ancient in Egypt in 2010 by a team of researchers from Cairo University – and found that it was cheese made from a mixture of several animal milks, including sheep, cow and water-buffalo.

The team also found evidence of Brucella melitensis – the bacterium responsible for causing brucellosis – within the cheese. Brucellosis is spread through the consumption of unpasteurised dairy products and is treated nowadays with antibiotics.