McGovern, Patrick; Stuart James Fleming; Solomon H. Katz;
The Origins and Ancient History of Wine
Routledge, 2000, 409 pages
ISBN 9056995529, 9789056995522
topics: | food | drink | wine | history
23 articles on the scientific, archaeological, botanical, textual, and historical aspects of winemaking in antiquity. Topics include the domestication of the Vinifera grape, the wine trade, the iconography of ancient wine, and the analytical and archaeological challenges posed by ancient wines. Chapter 10: Searching for Wine in the archaeological record of ancient Mesopotamia in the Third and Second Millenia BC, in McGovern. RL Zettler and NF Miller, has an very informative look at the evidence from artifacts etc. of ancient Iraq. At the Sumerian city of Lagash (near Basra in Southern Iraq, may have been on the Euphrates or the the Shat-al-Arab in 4000BCE) a complete brewery has been excavated dating to around 2500 BCE. The brewery included tanks for the making of beer-bread (bappir), a mixture of dough and aromatic herbs, and a large oven in which, according to the hymns to the beer-goddess Ninkasi, the beer bread would have been baked. [2] Another shard from a pottery jar contains the Sumerian cuneiform signs for "beer" and "jar". Sumerian cylinder seals also depict beer drinking at banquets and during sexual intercourse [2].