Five thousand years old, it produced beers consumed during sacrificial rites.
Considered the oldest globally, a team of archaeologists has unearthed a large-scale beer-producing infrastructure at the Abydos burial site in southern Egypt.
Beer is one of the oldest beverages produced by humans, as remains and Evidence of its production dating back thousands of years have shown. Egyptian archaeologists recently announced that they had unearthed the world’s first industrial brewery, which, according to their estimates, produced tens of thousands of liters of beer for the region’s ancient kings.
A PLURIMILLENNIUM INDUSTRIAL BREWERY
In recent years, researchers have made discoveries that have reshaped our understanding of beer’s history, tracing its origins through 5,000-year-old containers and funnels and even recreating these ancient breweries in the lab. Excavations in Israel have uncovered Evidence of beer production dating back some 13,000 years, making it the oldest known example to date.
The recently unearthed dedicated beer-making infrastructure in Abydos, one of the oldest cities in ancient Egypt, does not date back to such distant times but offers a good insight into the region’s natural production. The region at that time. The site has initially been discovered over a century ago, in 1912. Archaeologists identified what appeared to be a set of eight-grain ovens during these excavations, arranged in an orderly row, among others. tombs and structures in the area dating from 3100 to 2700 BC
PRODUCTION CAPACITIES MUCH GREATER THAN THOSE OF OTHER FACILITIES OF THE ERA
Artifacts from other sites in the region have indicated that these ovens were used to produce beer. The archaeologists, therefore, returned to the original site and continued their excavations to unveil the full extent of this brewing activity and collect samples for dating and analysis.
Some of the ovens used to produce beer in ancient Abydos.
According to archaeologists, the infrastructure would have been able to manufacture more than 22,000 liters of beer at a time, a production scale far more significant than other facilities existing at that time in ancient Egypt. Set in a sacred wilderness that was exclusively the domain of the first kings of Egypt, the team says the facility served as a significant part of royal expression during a critical period in the nation’s history.
“This brewery was probably built at this specific location to support the royal rituals taking place inside the burial facilities,” the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement. “Evidence of the use of beer in sacrificial rites was also found during excavations. “
