The Beer in the Ancient Orient. 3l 



has even gone so far as to show the yellow grains on the 

 exterior of the vat, which is painted red. Next we see the 

 sieving of the beer-mash. The semi-liquid mass is poured 

 into a flat, wide-woven basket, in which we see sometimes 

 one, sometimes two servants kneading the mass with both 

 hands. The basket is placed over a large jar, which .stands 

 either in a turned over basket or in a foot-stand of basket- 

 work. When the beer loaves had been thoroughly kneaded 

 and stirred, the liquid filtered through the basket into a large 

 jar below, from which it was finally poured into the large 

 beer jars. This work of filling the beer jars was called mh hk.t, 



kQ \ ^'!fln Rifeh large conical bowls with a hole in the 



bottom have been found, which served the purpose of pressing 

 and stirring the beer loaves, in order to squeeze out the fer- 

 mented beer from the loaves. Petrie^ notes that one still 

 contained a pressed cake of barley mash and grains. In grave 

 No. 29 were also found mud-models of vases with blue line 

 pottery belonging to the end of the XVIII th dynasty. Some 

 of these vases were closed with mud caps, many of which 

 still containing barley grain and barley mash. The persons 

 represented as filling the beer bottles, are always seen sitting 

 on the ground. One hand is inside the long bottle, while the 

 other is holding it (see Illustration No. 17). It seems that 

 before the bottles were filled with beer, they were smeared 

 with bitumen or the like, as was done with the wine bottles. 

 These bottles, when filled, w^ere finally closed with large balls 

 of Nile-mud. 



A recipe to prepare Egyptian beer is also found in the 

 Rabbinic literature, to which J. H. Bondi first called attention 2 

 In Mishna Pesackim, III, 1 are enumerated f 'aim ^Tari "ID 

 ^'M'Q'n DiniTl "^lanxn "Median beer and Idumaean vinegar and 

 Egyptian zythos\ The Gemara {B. Pesachim 42b) remarks 

 that barley is put into the first two. It says regarding the 

 Egyptian beer: "What is Egyptian zythost Rabbi Joseph 



1) Flinders Petrie, Gizeh and Rifeh (British School of Archaeology in 

 Egypt and Egyptian Research Account, 13 th year, 1907), p. 23. 



2) Aeg. Z., 33, p. 62. 



Lutz, \'iticulture and Brewing. 6 



