The following is my original English-language essay
titled "In the Land of Israel, Beer Came Late:
Historical Brew Traditions in the Near East."
It appeared in German translation in the catalog
for the "Beer is the Wine of this Land" exhibit in the
Munich Jewish Museum, April 2016.
Jews
and beer have a long history together, going back at least 3,000 years. But others have been together with beer even
longer.
In
fact, archaeological evidence shows that beer was brewed in the Land of Israel
only after it was well established in its neighbors to the north and south: Mesopotamia
(the Fertile Crescent) and Egypt. In
these two great centers of early civilization, the climate and soil were
excellent for the growing of huge amounts of grain, particularly barley and
wheat. Most of the harvest, of course, went
to making bread and for eating as roasted grain. But a quantity not much less was used for
brewing beer.
The
same conditions that made Mesopotamia and Egypt perfect for growing cereals,
made them poor for growing grapes. In
Canaan, the Land of Israel, it was just the opposite: the cooler highlands and
the soil were suitable for viniculture and other fruits, but less so for
grain.
So
when we look at "national beverages," Israel was the country of wine,
while Egypt and the Mesopotamian empires of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia
were the lands of beer.
 |
| Egyptian agricultural scenes. |
But
the story of beer begins long before that.
In fact, we have to go back to the Neolithic period which, in the Near
East, was about 9000 – 8000 BCE. It was
during this period that our forebears went from being hunters and gatherers to
being farmers and herders. In short,
life changed from being nomadic to being sedentary.
A
bit later, grains were domesticated, including wheat and barley. What makes perfect sense, even to historians,
is that farmers might have left a vessel of harvested cereals out in the
rain. The moisture soaked out the sugars
in the grain. Wild yeast cells which
were in the air fell into this mixture and began the perfectly natural process
of spontaneous fermentation. Within a
short time, a day or two, the liquid would have turned into a sweetish, alcoholic mixture which we would call today
"beer."
We
can also assume that our forgetful Neolithic farmers, whether in Egypt or the
Fertile Crescent, actually tasted the stuff and enjoyed it. They also probably liked the way it made them
feel. And so, the very human activity of
drinking beer came to be.
Everyone
drank beer, men and women, old and young.
It provided concentrated nutrients – calories, carbohydrates, protein,
vitamins and minerals. Even before
boiling became a step in the brewing process, beer was safer to drink than
water because the alcohol killed most of the pathogenic microbes.
Throughout
the ancient Near East, beer was thought to have curative powers. It was used to treat coughs and swollen eyes,
intestinal parasites, constipation and stomach pains. While it's true that inebriation was always a
problem lurking in the background, beers at the time were relatively low in
alcohol, usually not surpassing 8% by volume, much lower than wine and spirits.
In
the lands of Mesopotamia especially, beer culture was always quite strong. We have a few images on clay tablets which
depict people sitting around a bowl of beverage and drinking it through
straws. The oldest one is believed to be
about 6,000 years old(!) and is from Sumer.
Most historians believe the drink to be beer.
 |
The ode to the beer goddess Ninkasi,
including perhaps the oldest recipe for beer. |
As
far as written texts go, there are several legends, recipes and account sheets
which relate to beer. For example, there
is a 3,900-year-old Sumerian poem which honors Ninkasi, the patron goddess of
brewing. (Most of the deities associated
with brewing were feminine, but more about that later.) This poem also contains the oldest surviving
barley beer recipe. Two of the lines
are:
Ninkasi,
you are the one who pours out the filtered beer of the collector
vat.
It is [like] the onrush of the Tigris
and Euphrates.
That's
a lot of beer!
 |
| Gilgamesh. |
In
the Epic of Gilgamesh, the 4,000-year-old Mesopotamian poem originally written
in Akkadian, we see how beer is one of the elements which differentiates
civilization from barbarism. Enkidu, who
was raised by animals and later becomes the close friend of the hero Gilgamesh,
is introduced to human culture by the prostitute Shamhat:
Enkidu does not know of eating food;
of beer to drink he has not been
taught. The prostitute opened her
mouth. She said to Enkidu: "Eat the food, Enkidu, [it is] the
luster of life. Drink the beer as is done in this land." Enkidu ate the food until he was
sated; of the beer he drank seven cups. His soul became free and cheerful; his heart
rejoiced. . . . He anointed himself
with oil. He became human.
The
Ebla Tablets discovered in Syria about 40 years ago are clay tablets, mostly
written in Sumerian cuneiform, from about 4,500 years ago. They tell us a lot about daily life in that
city, including the production of beer.
About
4,000 years ago, the famous law code of King Hammurabi regulated the sale and
the strength of beer. For example, stiff
fines were imposed on anyone selling beer at inflated prices.
From
the language, it was clear that this was referring to women innkeepers. They were also warned that they had to accept
grain as payment for beer, and not insist on silver. Mesopotamian priestesses could not drink beer
in public. The code states:
If a [priestess] who does not reside
within the cloister should open a tavern
or enter a tavern for some beer, they shall burn that woman.
I
doubt if public drinking has ever since had such a harsh penalty!
Even
though priestesses and other women were denied access to taverns, they were
among the most prominent brewers. This
was true when most beer was brewed in the home, of course, since women were in
charge of the family's food and drink requirements. Brewing was closely associated with baking
bread because the ingredients were so similar: grain, water and perhaps other
additives for flavor.
When
brewing became industrialized, actually a big business, women also continued to
work in the breweries. Some temples also
had their breweries, and these were staffed by the priestesses. Other professions had their patron deities,
but only those for beer brewing were goddesses, Ninkasi (the Sumerian goddess who
covered the production of beer), Siris (the Mesopotamian goddess of beer and
Ninkasi's daughter), and Siduri (who covered the enjoyment of beer).
As
the beer industry grew, male workers also joined in. Several archaeological sites in Mesopotamia
have revealed large quantities of vats, jugs and strainers, and these are
assumed to be professional breweries.
Sumerian tablets found at Lagash and dating over 4,400 years ago report
on the supply of grain to brewers and on the supply of the beer itself. Some 60% of the cost of beer went towards
wages, a proportion which is probably accurate even in modern breweries.
In
other professions, a ration of beer was part of the wages. A simple laborer in Sumer received
approximately one liter of beer a day.
Low-ranking officials received two liters; officials of a slightly
higher rank and women in the royal court got three; high-ranking officials took
home five liters a day! These quantities
demonstrate that beer was indeed a major part of the average diet. They also point to the fact that this
beverage must have had a very low alcoholic content. If not, all of Sumer would have been walking
around inebriated every day!
With
beer such a universal and accessible drink, there was a need for variety. According to tablets relating to beer, Mesopotamians
were familiar with at least eight different beers made from barley, eight
brewed from wheat, and three which used a combination of grains.
The
use of hops as a flavoring in beer was unknown, since these were first used no
earlier than the ninth century CE in Europe.
But beers were flavored with such additives as honey, date syrup,
grapes, figs and sycamore.
The
brewing process in Mesopotamia was different from modern brewing. These days, the malted grain itself is
steeped in water which then undergoes fermentation with yeast. In the Fertile Crescent, there was an
intermediate stage: baking the grain into loaves of bread.
This
is how it worked: The grain was first steeped in water for two to three
days. The water was poured away and the
softened grains began to germinate, releasing enzymes which converted the
starch to sugars. At this stage, the
germination was halted by roasting the grain or just heating it in the Middle
Eastern sun. This process, called
malting, is still basically done today as the first step in brewing.
But
then the grain was ground, mixed with spices (or not) and baked into loaves of
bread. This intermediate baking process,
some brewing experts claim, is akin to the modern day process of roasting the
malt in kilns, where the dry heat prevents mold growth and assists the
development of enzymes.
When
these loaves were crushed and left to soak in a vat of water, the fermentation
process began. After several days, this
sweet liquid would drip through holes in the bottom of the vat into another
container. Here it would continue to
ferment for a few more days as the alcoholic content rose. And voila!
Beer.
What
happened then? There were no cans, no
bottles. Unlike wine, beer at the time
could not be stored for long periods. It
had to be drunk as soon as possible after it was made. The fresh beer was poured into ceramic
vessels for transporting it to wherever there were drinkers: homes or taverns
or temples. The most common type of beer
container in Mesopotamia was large and pear-shaped, and had to be rested on a
stand.
Drinking
could be done alone, with food, or more usually, in social situations. As was pointed out above, one of the more
common clay depictions of social life in Mesopotamia (particularly on cylinder
seals from the third millennia BCE) is two or more men sitting together and
drinking beer with straws out of a common bowl.
The straws were necessary because seeds, straw, chaff and chunks of
bread would usually be floating on the top of the beer, and the straws enabled
the imbibers to get to the clear liquid underneath.
For
the wealthy, even beer-drinking straws could be signs of social status. Gold straws were found in the royal tomb of
the Sumerian lady Pu-abi in the city of Ur Kasdim, next to the silver vessel
which probably held her daily beer ration.
Another
clay tablet from Dur-Sharrukin, the capital of Assyria 2,800 years ago, shows
four noblemen drinking their beer out of tankards without straws. Apparently, this beer had been pre-strained,
as befits the social class of the drinkers.
From
all accounts of documentation (papyrus and wall hieroglyphics) and drawings,
beer brewing and consumption was even more widespread in Egypt than in Mesopotamia. Many Egyptologists are convinced that it was
the production and distribution of grain for baking and brewing that supported
the entire economic and political structure of ancient Egypt. Witness the story of Joseph in the Book of Genesis,
where the distribution of stored grain during a famine led to the concentration
of all land into the hands of the Pharaoh.
The
earliest textual reference to beer is from the time of the Fifth Dynasty,
around 2500 BCE. The word used then was washenket,
but beer generally was called heket or tenemu.
There
is evidence, however, that beer was brewed in the Nile Delta region even
earlier, in the fourth millennium BCE.
Beer could certainly be called the "national drink" of ancient
Egypt, the "wine of this land."
 |
| Model of Egyptian beer brewers. |
As
in Mesopotamia, beer had a divine feminine source, in this case the goddess
Hathor, called "the inventor of beer brewing" or the "Lady of
Drunkenness." There was an annual
festivity at her shrine in Dendera, where unlimited supplies of beer were
distributed to the pilgrims. No doubt
public drunkenness became a big problem.
Another
legend has it the god Osiris, associated with fertility, death and
resurrection, who taught the Egyptian forefathers how to brew beer. And although Hathor may be closely associated
with beer, it was actually Tjenenet who was the goddess of beer. With polytheism, there is always a
choice.
People
from all levels of society had their daily beer ration: from the Pharaoh and
the nobility, to the common laborers, soldiers and even schoolchildren. The basic daily ration of the
"employed" workers who built the pyramids at Giza, for example, was
five loaves of bread and two jugs of beer.
We're not sure if this included the "slave" laborers.
To
provide for all of this consumption, every Egyptian household had the necessary
implements to brew its own beer. As in
Mesopotamia, brewing and baking were in the hands of the women. In addition, quite a few sites have been
found throughout Egypt which were clearly industrial-scale breweries. These include Kahun, Tel el-Amarna, Kom
el-Nana, and Hieraconpolis.
In
March 2015, workers at a building site in Tel Aviv discovered 17 storage pits
for produce which were 5,000 to 5,500 years old. The pits contained a 6,000-year-old dagger
and flint tools, as well as animal bones and hundreds of pottery shards dating
back 5,000 years.
Some
of the pottery was made with straw and other materials which link it to
Egyptian vessels used for brewing beer.
This would make it the northernmost Egyptian site during the early
Bronze Age, as well as the northernmost Egyptian brewery which was ever
discovered.
Were
these vessels made in Egypt and imported to Tel Aviv, or were they made by
Egyptians living in Tel Aviv? Were the
Egyptians living there making the beer only for themselves, or did they share
it with the locals? Archaeologists are
still looking for these answers.
What
we can assume, however, is that the Egyptian brewery in Tel Aviv used the same
process as other Egyptian breweries and which is well portrayed on a wall
painting from the tomb of the Egyptian official Ti at Sakkara, dating back to
the third millennium BCE.
 |
An Egyptian depiction of the
various steps in brewing beer. |
Here
we can see and read each stage in the beer brewing process: Storing the grain
in silos; crushing the grain with large mortars and pestles; grinding the grain
on flat stones (done by men and women workers) and sifting the flour; adding
water and kneading the dough into loaves; pressing the loaves through a sieve
to break them up and soaking them in water; pouring this mixture into pans
which are then stacked up and baked; crumbling the baked loaves and adding
leavening and water; kneading this mixture and leaving it to ferment; straining
this liquid, which is now fresh beer, into a vat, and then pouring it into clay
vessels which are then sealed with conical stoppers.
Whew! How much experimentation, trail-and-error,
and human intelligence must have gone into perfecting this process? And all to produce a better cup of beer!
 |
| Harvesting grain. |
The
grain used to make this beer was either barley or emmer wheat, the main wheat
variety grown in Egypt during the Pharaohs.
Quite a few types of Egyptian beers are mentioned, including dark beer,
date beer, sweet beer, iron beer (perhaps having a red or rusty color), thick
beer, garnished beer, and friend's beer.
There
was also "beer of eternity," which was placed in tombs to accompany
the deceased to the afterlife. It didn't
have to taste very good – just have a long shelf life. On one wall painting from Dendera, the deceased
is pictured sitting on his chair while his wife offers him a jug of beer with
the words: "Refreshing beer from your cellar, for your Ka, the
sustaining vital powers."
The
Land of Canaan/Israel
When
we come to the Land of Canaan/Israel, archaeological evidence of beer brewing
is much harder to find. We have no
recipes of brewing or allocation of beer, no pictures or clay tablets of
noblemen or women drinking beer with a straw, no paintings of how to brew beer,
no patron deities of brewing, no poems or epic adventures involving beer, and
no sites attesting to industrial brewing (except those belonging to foreign
invaders!).
Even
the earliest vessels associated with brewing – pottery jugs, baking pans, large
vats, large mixing bowls (kraters), and pottery vessels with a single hole in
the bottom for straining – were mostly all found in areas which were controlled
and inhabited by Egyptians! Beginning
from the late fourth millennium BCE, these objects were found in En Besor and
Deir el-Balah near Gaza and at Arad in the Negev Desert.
Also
reflecting possible Egyptian influence are the findings of bronze straw
strainers at Gezer, Megiddo and Tell el-Ajjul in Gaza. These unusual implements, which are assumed
to have been attached to the bottom of drinking straws, are from the Middle
Bronze Age, 3,500 to 4,000 years ago.
But
what about the "natives" – the Canaanites, the Philistines and the
Israelites? Here, it's not until the
Iron Age, "only" 3,000 years ago, that we find any evidence of beer
brewing and drinking. Instead of sitting
around drinking beer through straws, the inhabitants of Canaan had individual
beer jugs. The unfiltered beer was poured
into the top of these jugs. The drinker
held the jug by a handle and drank the beer through a spout which came out of
the side of the vessel. Very
convenient.
But
what made the beer jug special was that the beer was filtered through holes in
the clay before it traveled down the spout and into the mouth. In some examples of these jugs, there was a
ceramic strainer in the top as well, so that the raw beer was filtered twice:
once when it was poured into the jug, and again just before it was drunk.
Jugs
like these were used by the Philistines and the Canaanites/Israelites. The only archaeological differences we can
see is that the Philistine jugs were better crafted and had extensive painted
decoration, while the Canaanite/Israelite jugs were somewhat cruder. But they both functioned in the same way – to
give the imbiber a pleasant, clean and tasteful experience while enjoying beer.
Whatever
else is known about the beer-making and beer-drinking habits in the Land of
Israel is found in the Tanach, also known by Jews and Christians as the
Bible, and in the Talmud, the record of rabbinic teachings compiled between the
first and the seventh century of the common era. And that is covered in the next essay.
Bibliography
Dayagi-Mendels,
Michal. Drink and Be Merry: Wine and
Beer in Ancient Times. Jerusalem:
The Israel Museum, 1999.
Hornsey,
Ian S. A History of Beer and Brewing. Cambridge: The Royal Society of Chemistry,
2003.
Horst
Dornbusch, (August 27, 2006). Beer:
The Midwife of Civilization.
Assyrian International News Agency (Online)
Smith,
Gregg. Beer: A History of Suds and
Civilization from Mesopotamia to Microbreweries. New York: Avon Books, 1995.
