Archaeologists may have found the remains of the world’s oldest brewery buried in Egypt. Located in an ancient necropolis, this 5,000-year-old facility was capable of producing up to 5,900 gallons of beer at a time.
This is before the time when Egyptians built pyramids for departed pharaohs! So what would they do instead? Egyptians honored their dead with huge quantities of beer.
Archaeologists from Egypt and United States have found a 5,000-year-old large-scale brewery at a funerary site in North Abydos. This brewery factory dates back to the time of King Narmer who ruled ancient Egypt around 3150 B.C., reports Agence France-Presse.
It consists of eight large rooms each 65 feet (20 meters) long, in which lay 40 clay pots arranged in two rows. Workers would have heated grains and water in the vats, which were held in place by clay levers.
Each basin was “held in place by levers made of clay placed vertically in the form of rings,” Dr. Mostafa Waziry, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said.
The brewery “may have been built in this place specifically to supply the royal rituals that were taking place inside the funeral facilities of the kings of Egypt,” archaeologist and mission co-head Matthew Adams of New York University said in a statement, according to The BBC.
Previous excavations around the site led researchers to believe the location may have been used for sacrificial rituals.
The site Peet discovered was lost until 2018, when researchers rediscovered it using magnetic survey technology. They found that the sheer scale of the brewery made it unlike any of the other beer-making facilities.
“That’s enough to give every person in a 40,000-seat sports stadium a pint,” Adams tells CBS. “This is Egypt’s, and perhaps the world’s, earliest example of truly industrial-scale beer production.”
This is not the only exciting discovery out of Egypt so far this year. Last week, archeologists revealed the discovery of 16 burial shafts, containing mummies with golden tongues.
What are your thoughts?
Image Source: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
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