African cuisine encompasses within its fold several nations, including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan. The roots of North African cuisine can be traced back to the ancient empires of North Africa, particularly in Egypt, where many of the country's dishes and culinary traditions date back to antiquity. Over several centuries traders, travelers, invaders, migrants and immigrants all have influenced the cuisine of North Africa. The Phoenicians of the 1st century brought sausages, while the Carthaginians introduced wheat and its by-product, semolina. The Berbers adapted semolina into couscous, one of the main staple foods. Olives and olive oil were introduced before
Semolina terms for wheat, "samita" and "godhuma", or may be loan words from the Semitic root "smd" – to grind into groats ("cf." ""). Modern milling of wheat into flour is a process that employs grooved steel rollers. The rollers are adjusted so that the space between them is slightly narrower than the width of the wheat kernels. As the wheat is fed into the mill, the rollers flake off the bran and germ while the starch (or endosperm) is cracked into coarse pieces in the process. Through sifting, these endosperm particles, the semolina, are separated from the bran. The semolina