World’s oldest large brewery discovered in Egypt, over 5,000 years old

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said a joint Egyptian-US archaeological team found a brewery believed to be more than 5,000 years old in an ancient cemetery in southern Egypt, and the scale of production is huge. Photo/From the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities Facebook page

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said today that a joint Egyptian-US archaeological team found a brewery believed to be more than 5,000 years old in an ancient cemetery in southern Egypt, and the scale of production is huge.

AFP reports that the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement on social media Facebook that the joint archaeological team found several breweries at the site of North Abydos in Sohag province. The statement said that the joint archaeological team found several “units”, each consisting of about 40 ceramic urns in two rows, at the North Abydos site in Sohag.

The statement quoted Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt, as saying that the ancient brewery probably dates back to the Time of King Narmer and is therefore believed to be “the oldest high-capacity brewery in the world. high production brewery” in the world.

Narmer, who ruled more than 5,000 years ago, founded Egypt’s first dynasty and unified Upper and Lower Egypt.

The statement also noted that British archaeologists were the first to discover the existence of the ancient brewery in the early 20th century, but were unable to confirm its location. Now a joint Egyptian-American archaeological team “has succeeded in re-locating it and discovering its internal composition.

The ancient brewery consisted of eight large zones, each of which was a “beer-making unit” in which clay urns were used to heat a mixture of grain and water to produce beer, Wachry said.

The archaeological team was led by Matthew Adams, an archaeologist at New York University, and Deborah Vischak, a scholar at Princeton University. Adams said the study found that the ancient brewery was so productive that at one point it could have produced about 22,400 liters of beer.

Adams also said the brewery “may have been built on this site specifically to supply the royal ceremonies that took place in the tombs of Egyptian kings. Excavation of these cemetery sites revealed evidence of beer use in sacrificial rituals”.

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said a joint Egyptian-US archaeological team discovered a brewery believed to be more than 5,000 years old and producing on a large scale in an ancient cemetery in southern Egypt.