Humans throughout history have demonstrated the need for social gatherings to celebrate significant occasions. In Egypt, where the calendar was based on the rise and fall of the Nile, which was so crucial to the agricultural economy, annual events such as the start of the inundation and the harvest were celebrated throughout the country. Over the centuries, the calendar became increasingly filled with the festivals of national or local deities, each celebrated over several days. Some yearly festivals commemorated divine marriages and births, such as the union of Horus and Hathor at Edfu, and the birth of their son Ihy at Dendera. While these public festivals are well-recorded, there is little evidence of the way in which similar private events were marked, if they were acknowledged at all. Whatever the occasion, however, the Egyptians knew how to celebrate.
Communal feasting, which was often accompanied by some form of musical entertainment, was an important element of public religious festivals, as well as private funerary and memorial rituals, with alcoholic drink featuring prominently. Images of funeral banquets depict tomb-owners and their guests surrounded by racks of jars containing wine and beer. In the tomb of Paheri at Elkab, attentive servants keep cups filled, saying that it is the duty of the guests to drink to the spirit of the deceased. When one guest raises a hand to refuse the refill, the waiter encourages her to ‘drink to drunkenness, make holiday’. One of her companions tells her to ‘drink, do not spoil the party’, and another guest takes the servant’s advice, demanding no fewer than 18 cups of wine because ‘my inside is as dry as straw!’. The appearance of wine in depictions of the funerary feast is likely to be a matter of aspiration rather than reality, since wine was an expensive luxury rarely affordable for most private celebrations.
Beer made from barley and flavoured with various botanical additives was the everyday drink of all Egyptians, and was available in a range of strengths. At the workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina, brewing beer for a festival was often cited in the attendance records as a reason for absence from work. For the major local festival of Amenhotep I, the royal patron of the village, a particular favourite was a potent brew known as ‘beer of Qode’, which was thickened and sweetened with dates. One of the biggest parties was the Festival of Drunkenness, held at Dendera in the first month of the year. Huge quantities of beer were brewed for distribution to the assembled pilgrims to commemorate the occasion when the annihilation of humankind by the rampaging leonine Sekhmet-Hathor was averted by means of a lake of beer.
Against the flow