Field Diary 2022.2 © Abydos Archaeology
Results of the latest excavation season at the Abydos Royal Brewery and a closer look at the newest finds with immersive video and 3D models
By now most of our readers will have a good sense of the pre/Early Dynastic brewery site at north Abydos, affectionately called “Cemetery D,” where the early twentieth-century archaeologist, T.E. Peet, had noted parts of eight separate brewery structures laid out in parallel trenches of “kiln”-like emplacements. Since 2018, seven of those original eight installations have been re-located and documented. Peet was not able to determine the full length of any single example in his earlier excavations, but our three seasons of work between 2018-2020 showed each structure to have measured up to 25m in length.
The excavations this season have revealed a whole new series of exciting details and let’s just say, this thing is even more industrial-sized than we dared to imagine.
Abydos Royal Brewery excavations, showing the full excavated extent of two of the eight known structures measuring approx. 35m long to-date. Photo by Logan Dean for Abydos Archaeology, 2022.
What We Know Now
Digging into previously unexcavated sections of the brewery this season, it’s now clear that at least some of the brewery structures were more than 35m long and contained more than 80 individual emplacements of the ceramic vats used in the cooking, or mashing, stage of beer production—and as we’ve yet to reach the full extent of even the longest examples, they will only continue to get bigger.
If all eight brewery structures were of comparable size, the overall production capacity of the brewery would approach 50,000 liters (or 100,000 pints) per batch. This represents a truly industrial scale of production, even by modern standards.
This season’s excavations uncovered the first examples of Naqada III/Dynasty 1 beer jars found in situ at the brewery, as well as some of the best-preserved architectural and design features so far documented at the site. The short, two-minute video clip below will give you a taste (pun intended) of these never-before-seen details of the brewery as it looked in Narmer’s day.
These results give us not only much clearer dateable contexts around the reign of King Narmer, but also the most intriguing archaeological evidence for the original construction, function, and scale of the brewery facility at the time of Egypt’s political unification in the early First Dynasty.
A look at the best-preserved section of brewery construction so far discovered, with intact roofing, windows (access ports) for wood fuel, and a notched design on the interior cooking vats, plus excavation of the first Naqada III beer jars found in situ, which date the brewery site to around the reign of King Narmer. Video by Wendy Doyon for Abydos Archaeology, 2022.
What’s Next?
The most important question arising from our new understanding of the royal brewery, its scale, and firmer dating within the Dynasty 0-1 transition is—What happened to all that beer? One possible line of evidence is the presence of huge deposits of empty beer jars at some of the nearby Early Dynastic royal funerary temples. None of these deposits have been fully investigated, which will be a focus of the next excavation season. A current hypothesis to be tested is that the beer’s primary purpose was for use in royal ritual inside these temples. This idea is supported by the fact that we have yet to find any evidence for large-scale consumption of the beer anywhere at Abydos. Yet, it is hard to believe that at least some of those 45,000 liters were not being drunk by someone!
The archaeological team this season also initiated full-scale photogrammetric documentation and modeling of some of the best-preserved brewery structures, as well as chemical residue analysis, C14 dating, and detailed analysis of the ceramics found at the site. These results, along with their contextual interpretation, will be published as quickly as possible to ensure the wide dissemination of data resulting from this NEH-funded research initiative.
You can also look forward to seeing the brewery up-close later this year when our excavations are featured in an upcoming episode of the National Geographic channel’s “Lost Treasures of Egypt” series. For now, enjoy these 3D models inside part of Narmer’s beer factory—our first experiments in teleporting you into the spatial reality of this unique, and very ancient, place.
—Wendy Doyon @digabydos, March 20, 2022
3D reconstruction of a Naqada III beer jar found in situ at the Abydos Royal Brewery this season. Model by Nick Hedley for Abydos Archaeology, 2022.
3D reconstruction-in-progress of the same well-preserved section of brewery featured in the video above. Model by Nick Hedley for Abydos Archaeology, 2022.