It has usually been argued that barley beer was the alcoholic
beverage of choice in ancient Sumer,
Did you
know...?
Queen
Pu-abi, who was
buried with her servants—who had all been ceremonially
poisoned—was accompanied to the afterlife with hundreds of
gold and silver goblets, drinking-tubes or straws of lapis
lazuli, and a five-liter silver jar, which is thought to have
been her daily allotment of barley beer!
| | since the hot, dry
climate of southern Iraq makes it difficult to grow grapevines, and
the textual evidence for viniculture and winemaking in Mesopotamia is
minimal before the 2nd millennium B.C. But based on chemical evidence for
wine inside jars that could've been used to transport and serve it, wine
was probably already being enjoyed by at least the upper classes in Late
Uruk times (ca. 3500-3100 B.C.). Early Dynastic cylinder seals depict the
royalty and their entourages drinking beer with tubes/straws from large
jars and a second beverage—presumably wine—from hand-held
cups.
Did you
know...?
Museum
scientists have analyzed what participants ate and drank at
the final funerary
feast of King Midas at Gordion
(ca. 700 B.C.) and discovered that it was lamb stew and a
mixed fermented beverage of wine, barley beer, and honey
mead!
| |
The wine
imported into lowland Greater Mesopotamia could have been brought from the
northern Zagros Mountains of Iran or other parts of the Near East, at
least 600 kilometers away. The 5th century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus
describes shipping wine down the Euphrates or Tigris from Armenia at a
much later period: round skin boats were loaded with date-palm casks of
wine and delivered to Babylon. River transport was also an option in the
Late Uruk Period. But if the demand for the beverage were great enough,
transplantation of grapevines to closer locales in the central Zagros and
possibly as far south as Susa would be anticipated. When the Late Uruk
trade routes were suddenly cut off at the end of the period, the pressure
to establish productive vineyards closer to the major urban centers would
have intensified.
A
"banquet" scene on an impression of a lapis cylinder seal from Queen
Pu-abi's tomb. A male and female on either side of a
wide-mouthed jar are shown imbibing barley beer through drinking
tubes, while others below raise high their cups, probably containing
wine, which is served from a spouted jar.
|
Future
excavation will be decisive in tracing the prehistory of viniculture and
winemaking in this region of the ancient Near East; already there is a
strong indication that the domesticated grape plant had already been
transplanted there as early as the mid-3rd millennium B.C. Elamite
cylinder seals, foreshadowing similiar scenes on Assyrian reliefs some two
millennia later, depict males and females seated under grape arbors,
drinking what is most likely wine.
|
Mesopotamia
- under the grape arbors...