Native Grains and Foreign Grapes in Ancient Egypt Term Paper by scribbler

The paper relates that while beer emerges as an intrinsic part of the fabric of Egyptian life in earliest times, wine--as a luxury beverage for royalty and their favorites--is far more likely to have originated as an exotic import of the predynastic and early dynastic period. The paper explores the origins of brewing in Egyptian history and finds that brewing and baking were closely associated throughout Egyptian history; they relied on the same raw ingredients and both were the province of women throughout Egyptian history. The paper also finds that Upper Egypt was the likely source from which brewing originated and there are signs that beer was manufactured on an industrial scale in Upper Egypt well before the dynastic era. The paper then discusses how export may be at the roots of the second of Egypt's primary alcoholic beverages, wine, which emerged suddenly in the late predynastic period--and in foreign jars. The paper finds that the origin of local viniculture is much more obscure, with no archaeological support for local viniculture before Dynasty III.