The earliest known recipes are from 1600 and came from an Akkadian tablet from southern Babylonia. The ancient Egyptians painted hieroglyphics showing the preparation of food. Many recipes are known from ancient Greece. Mithaecus's cookbook was an early one, but most of it has been lost. Athenaeus quotes one short recipe in his Deipnosophistae. Roman recipes are known with some of them starting in the 2nd century B.C with Cato the Elder's De Agri Cultura. Many other authors of this period explained eastern Mediterranean cooking in Greek and Latin.