Viticulture and Brewing in the Ancient: Cooking in America

A century ago little was known about the ancient Near East, and that little had been transmitted by unreliable hands; moreover, most of it came from a time which itself was much later than the period in which the ancient Oriental nations played an all-important role. Only a few decades ago the whole of Western Asia and Egypt were like an immense field of ruins lying in impenetrable silence, and the little we knew about it came from the pen of a few Greek and Roman writers, who on account of their foreign way of thinking, lack of familiarity with the psychology of the Oriental and their inability to master the Oriental languages were little fitted to become absolutely safe guides. They understood only that which was similar to their own culture. The treasures of Babylonia, Assyria, Asia Minor, Syria and Arabia had. been hidden away by fate; and Egypt had already undergone a process of decay when the Greeks entered that country and wrote down their cursory notices about the land and its people. There were only fragments miserable fragments by which posterity could behold the ancient world. ... The following pages purport to place together the most important, but by no means the entire, material which has come to light regarding the viticulture and brewing in the ancient Orient, material which to a large degree can at best be found only isolated in the respective literatures (Introduction).

Henry Frederick Lutz, was Professor of Egyptology and Assyriology and Associate Curator of the Anthropological Museum at the University of California, Berkeley.

Henry Frederick Lutz was Professor of Egyptology and Assyriology and Associate Curator of the Anthropological Museum at the University of California, Berkeley. Best known for his scholarly works on the ancient Near East, Lutz's 1922 volume aimed at a wider audience with a more accessible account of the history of viticulture and brewing in the Ancient Near East. Lutz uses translations of Egyptian hieroglyphs, interpretations of tomb drawings and statuary, as well as Hebrew and Arabic texts, to add to our knowledge of the making of alcoholic beverages in the ancient Near East and to elucidate the drinking customs of these cultures.