The Use of Beer in the Ancient Near East

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The first chemical proof of beer production, found inside ceramics from Godin Tepe located in the Zagros Mountains, showed that beer production occurred as early as the fourth millennium BC. Later sources provide even more evidence of beer production in sources such as the Enuma Elish, or the Babylonian Epic of Creation, written between the fourteenth and twelfth century BC. Other texts and wall paintings depict the importance of beer in various Ancient Near Eastern cultures, yet scholars continue to ignore the importance of beer, and instead, incorrectly translating beer to mean wine or a strong drink.1 This is most likely due in part to today’s society in which beer is seen more as a drink for rowdy sports fans compared to wine or liquor. Regardless of what some scholars may think, the use of beer in the Ancient Near East is numerous including encouraging the agricultural revolution, medicinal uses, economic uses, inducing happiness, and religious uses.
To begin with, scholars, such as Dr. Patrick Hayes of Oregon State University, believe that beer drove the first agricultural revolution and makings of civilizations. Barley, a main ingredient of beer, was actually the first crop planted. As the demand for beer rose, due to the effects of intoxication, humans had to find a way to harvest more barley. Domestication, leading to agriculture, served as the solution. Dr. Patrick McGovern, professor of bio-archaeology at University of Pennsylvania, backs up Dr. Hayes’s claim with pottery found with traces of beer chemicals on it tracing back to 3,000 years before the first bread was baked.3 Dr. Hayes also states that the agriculture of beer helped fuel the invention of the plough, to help dig holes to burry seeds, irrigation, to b...

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... East were not true feasts without the serving of beer.
Feasts were seen as “important arenas of political action in ancient civilizations.”15 Feasts provided a fun exciting atmosphere, even if business needed to be discussed. Beer, with it’s intoxicating properties, helped “lubricate labor exchanges, ritual acts, family negotiations, and other activities.” Certain political groupings were quite large and “leaders and elites in early complex societies often needed to host much larger events where much more alcohol was consume.”15 “Power in these societies, therefore, was based in part on overcoming the material, temporal, organizational, and labor obstacles to creating, controlling, and capturing sufficient amounts of alcohol for largescale feasts.”15 Similar to today, the man who can provide the best, and most, beer is considered more favorable than other men.

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