Notices regardi ng the Vineyards of Egypt. 323 
of the Mareotic wine of Egypt. M. Malte Brun has clearly prov- 
ed the existence of wine in Ancient Egypt, and the weakness of 
the arguments which have been adduced in opposition to this 
fact. He might have added a decisive argument, the paintings 
of the ancient hypogees of the Thebais, among which there have 
been discovered, twenty years ago, representations of the vin- 
tage, and of the manufacture of wine in all its stages, as well 
as transparent vessels, through which the wine contained in them 
is seen, so as to leave no doubt remaining with regard to the use 
of that substance among the Egyptians * *. There have beeif 
found also among the ruins of the cities, broken amphora?, and 
at their bottom the very residue of the wine, in which the tartar 
was preserved. These facts, taken in connection with the pas- 
sage in Herodotus, where four arysteres of wines are allotted to 
each of the two thousand guards of the king daily, effectually 
remove all uncertainty with regard to the vineyards of Egypt. 
Nor is M v Costay, in his interesting memoir upon the grottoes 
of Elethyia, difficulted by the other passage of Herodotus re- 
garding the use of beer in Egypt *f* ; he does not even think it 
necessary to combat the consequences which have been drawn 
from it j. 
It is thus that the attentive traveller may dispel, by a single 
observation, the mists which the most profound erudition cam 
not always dissipate, especially when authors contradict each 
other, and when the same writer plainly contradicts himself, as 
is the case with Herodotus in the matter referred to above. 
However, independently of the discovery of the French travel- 
lers, it might perhaps have been observed, that the historian 
who denies the use of wine to the Egyptians, in the 77th chap- 
ter of his second book, accords a portion of grape wine to the 
Egyptain priests in the 37th chapter, and four measures of wine 
to the warriors in the 168th chapter, which shews that he had 
at first interpreted, in a certain sense, what he had been inform- 
• The same fact has been observed In the paintings of Thebes . — Description 
des Hypogees , chap. ix. p. 335. 1st Edition ; and vol. iii. p. 63. 2d edition, as well 
as plate xlv- of vol. 2. of the Atlas. 
*j* 44 As they have no vines in their country, they drink beer.” 
X Descript, de 1’Egypte, aut. mem. t. i. p. 61. 1st edition ; and t, vi. p. 112 
2d edition ; as well as Plate 68 of vol. 1, of •the Atlas. 
