Image Details

© DEA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY

Like an illustrated cookbook, this painted relief from the Saqqara tomb of a 5th Dynasty Egyptian official named Ti (c. 2480–2350 B.C.E.) lays out the step-by-step process for making beer. The complete wall picture (not shown here) depicts workers collecting, crushing and grinding grain, heating the pottery, pouring the dough into the pottery vessel (shown in the lower panel above) and removing the baked loaves (upper panel), adding the loaves to a concoction of other ingredients and filtering it, and then pouring the liquid into jars and sealing them to ferment before being consumed. Unlike today’s beer, ancient beer did not include hops or carbonation.