In addition to identifying the earliest use of grape wine in Egypt, and illuminating trade connections between the Levant and the earliest dynastic periods of the ancient Egyptian civilization, the research does much to assist in the identification of ancient herbal recipes in the ancient world. Prior to this finding, textual sources were the primary source of information for the use of resinated wines and herbal remedies in Egypt, and most of them date to the New Kingdom, some 1200 years later than the Scorpion King.
The ancient Egyptian word for physician is "swnw" and the Scorpion King's successor Djer was called a physician in (much) later texts. The herbs found in the wine are all Levantine domesticates; but according to Egyptian records from the New Kingdom, several of them were used for medicinal purposes. Coriander is mentioned in several medical prescriptions, and eight baskets of it were recovered from Tutankhamen's 18th Dynasty tomb.
The amphora illustrated above was recovered from the early Byzantine site of Gebel Adda in Egypt (4th-6th century AD) some 3500 years after the Scorpion King. Yet it, too, contained resinated wine with a rosemary additive, attesting to the longevity of herbal wines in the Egyptian civilization.
Sources and Further Information
McGovern, Patrick E., Armen Mirzolan, and Gretchen R. Hall 2009 Ancient Egyptian herbal wines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesin press.
McGovern, Patrick E. 2003. Wine of the Earliest Pharaohs, pp. 85-106 in Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture. Princeton University Press.
