5,000-Year-Old Large-Scale Brewery Discovered in Egypt
Believed to be the oldest known “industrial-scale” brewery in the world, a 5,000-year-old facility has been discovered in the North Abydos excavation site, located in the southern Egyptian city of Sohag. Consisting of eight areas, each with around 40 earthenware pots arranged in rows, the brewery would have produced about 5,900 gallons at a time. “That’s enough to give every person in a 40,000-seat sports stadium a pint,” says expedition lead, archaeologist Matthew Adams. Dating back 3150 BC, when King Narmer ruled, the brewery’s size and scale “also highlights the wealth of Egypt’s rulers from the start of the pharaonic period, which likely began with Narmer, though some accounts place his rule at the end of the predynastic period,” Livia Gershon writes for Smithsonian Magazine. Find out more there.
Image courtesy of Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Via smithsonianmag.com link opens in a new window
