Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)

MARGARET M. BAKOS: The divine power of Wine

The Egyptians regarded death as the end of a cycle of existence: the return to the origins, the rebirth into eternity. For the dead to follow the passage to the afterlife, it was necessary for the living to execute all the details of the funeral ceremony. In these ceremonies, wine was essential not only for its theological and mythological significance, but also because the Egyptians sought to offer their best for their Gods and their dead. As a result, wine has been a fundamental component of their offering lists since ancient times. In ancient times, as today, there was the practice of putting detailed labeling on the wine jars. Analysis of the amphora found in many tombs, especially from Thebes, has enabled researchers to identify the wine's origin, in spite of the fact that the wine itself had dried up centuries before. The determinative hieroglyph for words such as "vine", "garden" and "wine" is a bunch of grapes supported by forked props. Most jars were labeled simply irp = "wine", but sometimes they could show the designation irp nfr - "good wine"

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. It is well documented that wine consumption in Ancient Egypt was restricted to the highest levels of society (aside from medicinal purposes), primarily because the price of wine was five to ten times higher than beer. In addition, because of their great demand for watering and need for specialist care, the grapes for wine could only be planted by rich land owners. Nubians, Asiatics and Palestinians were utilized in the harvesting and making of wine. Ramesses II refers to this when dedicated more than five hundred vineyards as temples for the god Amun with the words: "... / made vineyards for you in the Southern Oasis [Kharga and Dakhlah] and again in the Northern Oasis [Bahriyah] without number and in Upper Egypt countless others. I multiplied them in Lower Egypt into hundreds of thousands. I furnished them with gardeners from the foreign prisoners."

5 Mu-Chou Poo points out that wine was a way of breaking the barrier between the living and the dead, the secular and the divine. Therefore, the offering of wine to the deities would have been much more than simple pleasure to the tongue.

6 Shezmu, the bloodthirsty god of wine pressing, played two distinct roles. One role, representing his good side, was symbolized by bringing wine to 4 W. C. Hayes, Inscriptions from the palace of Amenthotep \\\,JNES 10 (1951), fig. 23. 5 H. Kees, Ancient Egypt. A Cultural Topography, London 1977, p. 82. 6 Poo, op, cit. (note I) p. 44.