Ancient Industrial Brewery Unearthed in Abydos

CAIRO, EGYPT—According to an Associated Press report, Mostafa Waziri of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities announced that a team of archaeologists from New York University and Princeton university discovered at the Abydos necropolis of a possible beer brewery dating to the Naqada III period, from about 3200 to 2750 B.C. Each of the brewery’s eight units holds about 40 pottery basins arranged in two rows measuring about 65 feet long and eight feet wide. Grains and water are thought to have been heated in the vessels. Matthew Adams of New York University said the beer may have been used during royal rituals in the necropolis. For more on alcohol in ancient Egypt, go to “Spirits for the Dead.”