This page includes information that may not reflect the current views and values of the Penn Museum.
|
|||
A Mesopotamian "banquet" scene as depicted on a lapis lazuli cylinder seal from Queen Pu-abi's tomb in the Royal Cemetry at Ur, dating to ca. 2600-2500 B.C. |
|
C
o n t e n t s :
|
Mesopotamia
Under
the Grape Arbors...
It has
usually been argued that barley beer was the alcoholic beverage of choice
in ancient Sumer,
The wine imported into lowland Greater Mesopotamia could have been brought from the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran or other parts of the Near East, at least 600 kilometers away. The 5th century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus describes shipping wine down the Euphrates or Tigris from Armenia at a much later period: round skin boats were loaded with date-palm casks of wine and delivered to Babylon. River transport was also an option in the Late Uruk Period. But if the demand for the beverage were great enough, transplantation of grapevines to closer locales in the central Zagros and possibly as far south as Susa would be anticipated. When the Late Uruk trade routes were suddenly cut off at the end of the period, the pressure to establish productive vineyards closer to the major urban centers would have intensified.
Future excavation will be decisive in tracing the prehistory of viniculture and winemaking in this region of the ancient Near East; already there is a strong indication that the domesticated grape plant had already been transplanted there as early as the mid-3rd millennium B.C. Elamite cylinder seals, foreshadowing similiar scenes on Assyrian reliefs some two millennia later, depict males and females seated under grape arbors, drinking what is most likely wine. |
|
|
|