Beer

An article from Food in the Ancient World from A to Z (2003). For an explanation of abbreviations in hte bibliographical references below see the printed volume.

Beer, alcoholic drink produced from the fermentation of malted cereals, in ancient times usually barley, also millet, rye and wheat (Athenaeus).

Beer was an important element of the diet in Pharaonic Egypt. In Sumer and in other civilisations of ancient Mesopotamia, from the third millennium BC, beer was a beverage whose name carried significance. In the Atrahasis epic the mother goddess Nintu is described as 'sated with grief; she longed in vain for beer'. Siduri the alewife or tavern-woman is a figure in the Gilgamesh story, advising the hero on his visit to the underworld. Several varieties and qualities of beer are recorded in Sumerian and Akkadian texts.

Beer was little known and generally disliked in Greece and Rome; however, it was the usual beverage in central and western Europe, made locally in various ways and therefore known under various borrowed names in Latin and Greek, as observed by Pliny and as specified below. Beer was important to the Roman army. In Diocletian's Price Edict zythus (beer of Egyptian type) is rated at half the price of cervesia, camum (beer of Gaulish and Dalmatian type); this again fetches half the price per pint allowed to table wine.

Modern beer can be kept in airtight containers under pressure: the beer of the ancient world was usually drunk when freshly made (although Spanish beer would keep, says Pliny). New beer still contained surface residue and sediment, and was therefore typically drunk with a straw. The practice is depicted on Near Eastern reliefs, is likened by Archilochus to fellatio, and was observed by Xenophon at first hand in Armenia.

Sicera, borrowed from Biblical Hebrew, was a technical term in Christian Latin for intoxicants not including wine. It is traditionally translated 'strong drink' in English Bible translations. Eventually, some time in the medieval period, its meaning in France and England became more specialised: Old French cisdre, English cider.

The grains of barley floated on top of the bowls, level with the brim; there were straws in the bowls, some longer, some shorter, unjointed. When thirsty one took a straw into one's mouth and sucked. It was at full strength, unless one added water, and was very pleasant when one was used to it.

Beer is shikaru in Akkadian (there are other specialised terms) and shekar in Hebrew. Terms used in Greek are pinon, also sikera for Levantine beer, zythos Egyptian beer, bryton Thracian beer, parabias Paeonian millet beer, kamon Dalmatian beer, kerbesia, kourmi, korma Gaulish barley and wheat beers. Terms used in Latin are sicera, zythus Egyptian beer, camum, sabaia Dalmatian beers, cervisia, cervesa, corma Gaulish beers, caelia, cerea Spanish beers.

Atrahasis tablet 3; Gilgamesh [Standard Babylonian version] tablet 10; Isaiah 24.9 (translated 'liquor' in AV, 'strong drink' in NEB); Isaiah 19.10 [Septuagint version] with commentaries by Eusebius, Theodoret, Cyril and Jerome; Herodotus 2.77 and Xenophon, Anabasis 4.5.26-27 (oinos ek kritheon, oinos krithinos 'barley wine'); Antiphanes 47 Kassel; Theophrastus CP 6.11.2; Diodorus Siculus 1.34.10; Dioscorides MM 2.87-88; Pliny NH 14.149, 22.164; Luke, Gospel 1.15; Vindolanda Tablets 1.4=2.190, 2.182, al.; Galen SF 11.882; Julius Africanus, Cesti 1.19.21; Athenaeus D 152c citing Poseidonius F 15 Jacoby, also 447a-d citing Archilochus 42 West and Aristotle fragment 106 Rose; Diocletian's Price Edict 2.11-12; Ammianus 26.8.2; Marcellus, On Medicaments 16.33.

H. F. Lutz, Viticulture and brewing in the ancient Orient. Leipzig, 1922. - J. Bottéro, 'Getränke' ['Les boissons': the article is in French] in Reallexikon der Assyriologie 1928- vol. 3 pp. 302-306. - Buck 1949 p. 390-91. - L. F. Hartman, A. L. Oppenheim, On beer and brewing techniques in ancient Mesopotamia. Baltimore: American Oriental Society, 1950. - M. Civil, 'A hymn to the beer goddess and a drinking song' in Studies presented to A. Leo Oppenheim (Chicago, 1964) pp. 67-89. - M. Hopf, 'Bier' in Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 1973- . - G. K. Sams, 'Beer in the city of Midas' in Archaeology vol. 30 (1977) pp. 108-115. - J. Gelber, 'Bread and beer in fourth millennium Egypt' in Food and foodways vol. 5 no. 3 (1993) p. 255 ff. - Milano 1994. - Jeremy Black, 'Mesopotamia' in The Oxford companion to wine ed. Jancis Robinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) pp. 618-9. - Brewer and others 1995 pp. 28-9. - Alexander H. Joffe, 'Alcohol and social complexity in ancient western Asia' in Current anthropology vol. 39 (1998) pp. 297-322. - Delwen Samuel, 'Brewing and baking' in Ancient Egyptian materials and technology ed. P. T. Nicholson, I. Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp. 537-576.

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