Around the mid-fifth century BC, the famous Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus visited Egypt. Later, when he wrote the celebrated Histories, he dedicated the entire second book of this work to such an extraordinary land.

Herodotus was interested in several aspects of Egyptian life and culture of his time and collected much information. Among the many themes tacked, he also discussed the food of those people and their millennial civilisation.

The historian writes:

The Egyptians eat bread, making loaves of coarse grain. […] They eat fish either raw and sun-dried or preserved with brine. Quails, ducks and small birds are salted and eaten raw; all other kinds of birds and fish […] are eaten roasted or boiled.

For wine, they use a drink made from barley, for they have no vines in their country. (Histories, 2.77.1)

Herotodus defines wine (oinos) as any product of fermentation; however, he clearly describes beer as the result of barley fermentation. From time immemorial, beer had been the most consumed drink in Egypt, at least since the third millennium B.C.

In 2021, a joint mission between Egypt and the USA (the New York University) discovered, in Abydos, a large (almost industrial) plant that produced large quantities of beer. Egyptologists think that the factory dates back to 3100 B.C., making it the most ancient brewery in the Mediterranean area.

According to Herodotus, we can refute the idea that Egypt had no vineyards through iconography and papyri sources; in fact, vineyards had existed for centuries in Egypt around the delta of the river Nile, near the salted lake of Mareotis and close to the city of Tanis.

What the historian says about food is connected to the diet of the artisans, scribes and professionals in general, but not the clergy, whose:

Religious observances are, one may say, innumerable. But also they receive many benefits […]; sacred food is cooked for them, beef and goose are brought in great abundance to each man every day, and wine of grapes is given to them, too. They may not eat fish. (II, 37)

Fertilised by the overflow of the Nile, the flood plain produced everything: cereals, vegetables, legumes and fruit, which were the basis of the nutrition of its population, who essentially lived on such products. Egyptians ate fish, vegetables, many onions, plenty of garlic, spices, and fruit, and drank beer every day.

We have some recipes used during the time of the Pharaohs: fried little sweets made of honey, which Ramses II (XX dynasty) much appreciated since he had them painted inside his tomb (1155 B.C. circa) with the procedure to make them. They needed whole wheat four, soft sheep or goat milk cheese, honey and poppy seeds.

In November 1922, after five years of intense research in the Valley of the Kings, financed by George Herbert, Lord Carnarvon (who unfortunately died soon after), the British Egyptologist Howard Carter finally found access to the royal tomb intact.

It became the discovery of the century!

It was the grave of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun (XVIII dynasty), who died at eighteen in 1323 B.C. circa and until then almost unknown.

Our intention is not to list all the art marvels among the five thousand finds Howard Carter discovered in the rooms (three chambers and an antechamber) almost untouched.

We can say that they found several wine amphorae. Three were placed in correspondence with the cardinal points at the sides of the golden chapel shielding the royal sepulchre. An amphora containing light white wine, apt for the morning breakfast, was at the East; on the contrary, at the West, an amphora with ted wine much stronger and reserved for lunch; while the last amphora of wine, defined “irep nefer nefer nefer”, that is ‘the best wine’, was in the southern part. On the top was a label with the following writing: High-quality Shedeh from the house of Aton of the Western River. Chief winemaker Rer.

It is one of the first wine labels in history.

They initially believed the amphora contained sweet, non-alcoholic wine from pomegranates, palm trees, or dates.

The Egyptian word irep means wine, but the name Shedeh does not have, until today, any translation; they mention it in some papyri, among which one of the Ptolemaic age stands out (so of the late period), today at the British Museum (Pap. Salt 825; BM 10051). The text reads that the Shedeh needs to be filtered and warmed up. That means they are describing mulled wine. Nonetheless, because of a gap in the Salt papyrus, the type of grape (either white or red) from which the Sadet derived remains unknown.

Oenologists think it was red wine, which they rendered intensely alcoholic and sweet during boiling. Hence, quite a good dessert wine of the Pharaoh age: red ruby, intense and aged.

The scientific confirmation of the oenologist hypotheses arrived in 2006, thanks to four researchers at the University of Barcelona, led by Professor Maria Rosa Guasch-Jane and Professor Rosa Maria Lamuela-Raventos. The Egyptian officers allowed the team to collect ancient wine residues from the bottom of the amphora and examine them through liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. The results (published in the Journal of Archaeological Science N33, 2006, 98 ss) confirmed the hypothesis that Shedeh was wine obtained from red wine.

It was probably the result of the combination of red wines from different vines, which is no longer possible to isolate/identify. This speciality was left to age for many years inside terracotta amphoras.

We cannot forget about another well-known Egyptian wine, much appreciated by Cleopatra (68-39 B.C.), as poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus reported. The queen, at first partner of Giulio Cesar and later of Marco Antonio, was a woman of great personality, intelligent and cultured, but notoriously accustomed to drinking excessively.

Propertius describes her tongue coated with too much wine (assiduo lingua sepulta mero, 3, 11, 56) and Horatius, in a famous Ode (I, 37), defines the queen ebria, meaning drunk and mentions her favourite wine, the Mareotico, produced in Egypt in the vineyards near the lake of Mareotis, a marshy and salty area of the western river delta, south of Alexandria.

It was a white and sweet wine, certainly appropriate for a sovereign.

Voluptuous and refined, Cleopatra drank Mareotico wine, at times with Marcus Antonio, a heavy drinker himself, as the philosopher Seneca testifies in a letter to Lucilius where he recalls both the good qualities of the Triumvir and his renowned ebrietas (Ep. X, 83, 25). 

Anna Cafissi