CHAPTER VI.

ANCIENT EGYPT.

The last branch of the human family, whose history reaches back to the earliest historic period, which will occupy our attention, though it be only for a brief space, is that which inhabited Egypt. Our information concerning the drinking habits of the ancient Egyptians is derived not only from sacred writings, but also from those of the Greek and Roman historians, and it is, moreover, confirmed from an entirely independent source, namely, from the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the ancient monuments of the country which have been preserved to our time.

There was a tradition, which we shall pass over without comment, that Isis or Osiris was the inventor of intoxicating drink; but we have very good ground for believing that at the time of the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt wine was already in common use there. That it was drunk at court may be gathered from the dream of Pharaoh’s butler,[137] and the hieroglyphics and pictures found on the ancient monuments which were coeval with or antecedent to that period,[138] demonstrate further that it was consumed by other classes of society, and that they must have been much addicted to drunkenness. At Beni-Hassan and Thebes, representations of wine-presses have been found, of which there appear to have been two kinds. One consisted of a long bag supported horizontally in an upright frame, and capable of being twisted so that the grapes which it contained were forced to yield their juices. In the engraving two men are depicted in the operation of squeezing the bag. The other is a foot-press, upon which several men are seen stamping upon the grapes with their feet. Other representations exhibit men engaged in the vineyards, or drawing wine from the vats into jars, servants handing cups to guests, and others carrying their masters home drunk from a party. In one case, the truth compels us to add, that a maid is seen approaching her mistress with a basin, into which the drink she has taken is being regurgitated after a fashion that gallantry forbids us further to describe.[139] Although we have such trustworthy evidence that wine was consumed in Egypt in the time of Pharaoh (for some of the monuments are probably of a much older date), and that drunkenness was not an uncommon vice, yet for accuracy’s sake we must mention that Herodotus, who lived B.C. 484, distinctly states that grapes were not grown in Egypt. He says,[140] “With respect to the Egyptians themselves, ... their drink is a wine which they obtain from barley, as they have no vines in their country.” Pliny, who lived much later (A.D. 23), but whose writings refer to a period many centuries antecedent, says nothing about the absence of vines in Egypt, but he also speaks of the beer made by them from “corn steeped in water;” and he adds the quaint remark, “Alas! what wondrous skill, and yet how misplaced. Means have absolutely been discovered for getting drunk even upon water.”[141]

As in the religious ceremonies of almost all, if not all ancient peoples, so in Egypt, too, wine was offered to the gods. Two kinds of vases were principally employed for that purpose, and one of considerable height was on grand occasions carried before the king in processions. Coming down to a later period in Egyptian history, that is to say, about the commencement of the Christian era, we find that wine was not only consumed in that country, but it was even exported to Europe. Athenæus, a comedy writer who lived in Egypt, and subsequently in Rome, about A.D. 230, mentions several kinds of Egyptian wine which were highly prized in Greece and Italy. One was called the mareotic wine, which took its name from a fountain called Marea, in the district of Alexandria, and from a town of the same name.[142] This wine is described as white, sweet, good for the breath, and digestible, and a special recommendation is that “it never produces any ill effect on the head.” The reader must not, however, infer from this that sobriety was the order of the day in the time of Athenæus, for he will soon be undeceived on that score. Other descriptions of Egyptian wine are mentioned by the same author, and the best of all appears to have been the wine of Antylla, a city near Alexandria, the revenues from the sale of which, he says, “the kings of those ages—both the Egyptian and Persian kings—used to give to their wives as pin-money.” Here, again, we have independent evidence of the antiquity of wine in Egypt; for the period referred to by Athenæus must have been long prior to his day. His writings, to which we shall have occasion to refer in a succeeding chapter, give anything but a flattering account of the ancient Egyptians, and according to him they must have been great topers. “Now, that the Egyptians really are fond of wine,” he says, “this is a proof that they are the only people amongst whom it is a custom at their feasts to eat boiled cabbages before all the rest of their food, and even to this very time they do so. And many people add cabbage seed to potions which they prepare as preventives against drunkenness. And wherever a vineyard has cabbages growing in it, there the wine is weaker.”[143] And then the author, as is his custom, clenches his assertion with corroborative testimony, chiefly in the form of extracts from the writings of older authors. Two of these, which are in verse, we will transcribe just as he gives them, for the amusement of our readers:—

“And Eubulus says, somewhere or other:

‘Wife, quick! some cabbage boil, of virtuous healing, That I may rid me of this seedy feeling!’”

“And so Alexis says:

‘Last evening, you were drinking deep, So now your head aches. Go to sleep: Take some boiled cabbage when you wake, And there’s an end of your headache!’”

Although much might be added to this brief reference to the drink and drinking habits of the ancient Egyptians, that is rendered needless by the fact that similar customs prevailed in Rome, and those will be treated at greater length hereafter. We will therefore simply add, in conclusion, that however excellent a means boiled cabbage may have been for alleviating drunken headaches, the sword of Islam proved a far more efficacious and permanent cure, for, as already stated elsewhere, abstinence, if not universal, is at least the rule of that faith in modern Egypt and Arabia.