The Daily Beast
How beer ruled the ancient world
Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers / The Daily Beast / Photos Getty Imagine digging out an old cemetery and walking across a brewery. This is exactly what happened last month when the Egyptian government announced that a team of Egyptian and American archaeologists had discovered the world’s oldest brewery. Pyramids, Pharaohs and now delicious drinks for adults – ancient Egypt had it all. The factory was excavated in Abydos, 280 kilometers south of Cairo and west of the Nile River. Abydos is best known for its temples and burial practices, with a number of monuments honoring Osiris, the god of the dead. Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, noted that the discovery took place on the site of an old cemetery and that the beer factory dates from the reign of King Narmer, who lived at the beginning of the First Dynasty and ruled. period, more than 5000 years ago. Dr. Matthew Adams, of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and one of the leaders (along with Dr. Deborah Vischak of Princeton University) of the mission, said the factory was built to supply beer for royal rituals. The brewery itself is divided into eight large sections, each containing 40 clay pots to mix grain and water. Adams said the brewery produced at best as many as 22,400 gallons of beer at a time. Beer was an important part of the ancient Egyptian diet and was drunk by everyone, from Pharaohs to peasants, and sometimes workers were also paid in beer. t the first place where beer was made. The world’s oldest alcoholic beverage probably comes from China, but beer probably originated in the Middle East. The factory is about the same time as ceramic barrels – still covered with a sticky beer residue – found in ancient Mesopotamia. The Sumerian “Hymn to Ninkasi” (c. 1800 BCE), sung in honor of the beer goddess, contains a recipe made by female priestess. For ancient Sumerians, beer was an important ingredient as it was healthier than drinking water from streams, which were often contaminated with animal waste. The ancient Egyptian beer was flavored with mandrakes, olive oil and dates, which make up the sweetness; it was only with the rise of beer among medieval monks that hops were thrown into the mix. Although hops today are the basis of the most popular beer form, there were competitors in the medieval world. As early as the eighth century AD, brewers used gravel (a combination of plants that like hops to prevent bacteria from growing in the liquid) in their concoctions. In his book Beer in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Richard Unger argues that gravel was the most popular form of beer in the 12th century. For many brewers, flavor additives were a necessity. Bavarian summer beer, for example, is fermented in open barrels that are exposed to bacteria and therefore ‘go down’. To cover the taste of this summer beer, brewers add other ingredients, including legumes, salt, chalk, soot and even ox bile and chicken blood. Beer should taste rather bad to add bile to improve the taste. The popularity of beer has almost inevitably led to regulation. In 1156 the city of Augsburg passed a resolution demanding that bad beer be destroyed for free or distributed among the poor. By 1336 the city of Munich had appointed beer inspectors and in 1516 the Bavarian Duke Wilhelm IV issued the Reinheitsgebot, or beer purity law, which stipulated that only barley, hops and water may be used in Bavarian beer. The decision, which became law for the whole of Germany in 1906, is the world’s oldest regulation of food safety, but the Bavarians were not the first to try to legislate beer. Cleopatra introduced a tax on beer – which the ancient Egyptians preferred to wine – to finance her wars with Rome. As Jason Lambrecht put it, ‘it was so outrageous for Egypt that it would compare to a tax on water today.’ Just as popular as the taxation of Cleopatra was, other governments tried it with varying degrees of success. In the 13th century, the French city of Aix-la-Chapelle decided that brewers who did not pay taxes would have their right hands cut off. When the British increased taxes on beer in the 17th century, they accidentally made gin the cheapest alcoholic beverage in the country. The consequent widespread consumption of gin has led to major alcohol problems in Britain, with the death rate surpassing the birth rate during this period. If this baboon’s skull is an indication of Egypt’s lost kingdom of Punt, taxes are not always a bad thing. When 27-year-old Arthur Guinness set up his brewery in 1752, he chose to make a dark beer with unmalted roasted barley because he could reduce the tax he would otherwise pay on malt and extra coal. The imposition of customs duties on beer (and wine) by Britain in 1764 was one of the many tax-related offenses that contributed to the American Revolution. After independence, beer spread widely and tax-free until Abraham Lincoln and Congress, like Cleopatra before them, introduced in 1862 a tax of $ 1 a barrel to help pay for the Civil War. Drinking beer supports your freedom. Today, beer remains America’s most popular alcoholic beverage. Historically, this has always seemed to be the case. Sixteenth-century colonists, who developed a recipe developed by Indians, used corn instead of malt in their recipes. It is revealing that one of the first job postings that residents of Jamestown, Virginia placed in England was that ‘two brewers’ joined them and made beer. Like the Americans, the ancient Egyptians loved their beer. Only when the Romans, who preferred wine and bread, turned Egypt into the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, were breweries replaced with grain sheds. With that, the beer recipes of the Egyptians were lost – but perhaps this new discovery will help to reveal the secrets of the ancient beer industry. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily membership of the beast: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. Learn more.