Wine, a drink for the elite in Mesopotamia

21 November 2024

In a Roman tomb dating from the 1st century CE, archaeologists discovered a glass urn containing what is believed to be the oldest preserved wine. But winemaking has been known to humans for much longer, as Assyriologist Cécile Michel explains in this post on the Brèves Mésopotamiennes blog.

In June 2024, archaeologists working on a Roman tomb dating from the 1st century CE, in the Seville region, discovered a glass urn containing white wine that had turned brownish-red. This is undoubtedly the oldest preserved wine, but analysis of tartaric acid deposits in jars discovered in Georgia, dating back to 6000 BCE, shows that winemaking has been known to humans for much longer. Cuneiform tablets reveal that the inhabitants of Mesopotamia mainly drank beer, but that they also drank wine imported from the west, where it was produced.

Unlike locally produced beer, wine came from mountainous regions and, like all imported products, was intended for the elite. In 3rd-millennium iconography, the king feasts with his guests, a cup in his hand, no doubt filled with wine. Urukagina, king of Lagash (2340 BCE), appreciated this nectar so much that he had a beer cellar built to store ‘jars of mountain wine’, in other words, wine from abroad. This geographical opposition between beer and wine also exists in the literature. When Gilgamesh reaches the ends of the known world, he quenches his thirst at the tavern by drinking beer. That is the Babylonian version; in the Hittite version discovered in Anatolia at Boğazkale, the ancient Hattusa, he drinks wine. Large deposits of grape seeds have been discovered at Boğazkale. Similarly, whereas in Mesopotamian divine banquets the gods drink beer – sometimes more than is reasonable –,in Ugarit, on the Mediterranean coast, the god El feasts on wine.

From the second half of the 4th millennium, the city of Uruk in southern Iraq imported wine from Aleppo (Syria). Vines were cultivated in northern Mesopotamia, along irrigation canals and in gardens from the 3rd millennium onwards, but winemaking processes do not seem to have been developed there. The wine trade is particularly well documented in the royal archives of Mari (Syria) from the 18th century BCE. Wine was clearly an expensive product. It was transported in hundreds of jars loaded onto boats that travelled down the Euphrates from Karkemish. Agents of the king of Mari selected and purchased the wine, not always successfully. The palace music director complained to one of them: ‘This wine stinks! It is unfit for consumption. Everything you sent is problematic!’

Stored in the royal cellar, wine was served at the king's table during celebrations, but was also offered by the king as a diplomatic gift to his allies. He sometimes distributed it to his senior officials and servants whom he wished to honour. The wine was decanted, filtered and selected. Honey, produced in the same regions as the wine, was often transported with it. Added to the wine on arrival at its destination, the honey sweetened it, which had the effect of restarting fermentation and increasing its alcohol content. There were various qualities of wine, young or old, of ordinary or excellent quality, sweet or bitter, and some vintages were renowned, including Sâmum wine, which originated in the Taurus Mountains.

Assyrian merchants based in Kültepe, ancient Kanesh, in central Anatolia, consumed relatively little wine, even though it was produced locally. The local Anatolian administration included a ‘wine chief’ and one month of autumn was named after the grape harvest. Merchants probably preferred beer, to which they were more accustomed.

In the 1st millennium, wine flowed freely from decorated gold cups at royal banquets. The stele of the banquet of Asurnazirpal II (883-859) shows that the king offered 10,000 wineskins to his guests at the inauguration of his new capital, Kalhu. A century later, wine was distributed to the king's officials and servants according to their rank in the hierarchy.

Further analysis of residues found inside the walls of certain ceramics excavated at sites in the Near and Middle East should provide more information about wine consumption, particularly in regions where it was not widely produced.