Would you like to taste the kind of drink that people in the Holy Land enjoyed in biblical times? Thanks to archaeology and a bit of scientific daring, you now can, at least in part. Here is the story of ancient beer, royal wine and the honey drinks in between.
Beer brewed with 3,000-year-old yeast
In 2019, Israeli scientists announced a first: they revived yeast that had survived for thousands of years inside the tiny pores of ancient clay jugs, and used it to brew beer and mead. The project brought together microbiologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University and Ariel University, and a local brewer.
The team worked with about twenty vessels from excavations around the country. They ranged from a 5,000-year-old Egyptian brewery site near Gaza to a Persian-period palace in southern Jerusalem. The best-tasting result came from a Philistine beer jug from Tel es-Safi, biblical Gath, from roughly the time of King David and King Solomon. The researchers raised a toast and reported that the beer was pretty good. Beer made with descendants of that Philistine yeast strain has since gone on sale in Israel.
Beer: the everyday drink
Beer was made from the same barley and wheat that fed the household. Grain was fermented into beer, and the Gath jug that gave us the yeast shows that Philistine households brewed it. Excavations at Tel es-Safi also revealed the remains of large feasts, with serving and drinking vessels, in the early Iron Age.
Wine: the drink of kings
Wine was a luxury of palaces and elites. The best evidence comes from the Canaanite palace at Tel Kabri in the western Galilee, from about 1700 BCE, nearly 3,700 years ago. Archaeologists uncovered a storeroom with 40 large jars, each holding about 50 liters, so around 2,000 liters of wine in total. Chemical analysis of residues found compounds that mark wine in all of the jars.
It was not plain wine. The residues also pointed to additives such as honey, resins from the terebinth and storax trees, cedar oil, juniper, and possibly mint, myrtle and cinnamon. The cellar sat close to a banquet hall where the elite ate meat and drank wine. The excavators suggest that this was a deliberate show of wealth, with flavors that evoked distant lands.
Honey and mead
At Tel Rehov in the Jordan Valley, archaeologists found about thirty clay beehives from the 10th–9th centuries BCE, the oldest known apiary in the world. It could have produced up to about half a ton of honey a year. Honey sweetened food and was used in drinks, and the same Israeli project also revived yeast for mead, a honey wine.
Trade: wine and oil on the move
| Period | Evidence |
|---|---|
| Early Bronze Age (about 3200 BCE) | A royal tomb at Abydos in Egypt contained jars imported from southern Canaan that held wine. |
| Middle Bronze Age (about 1700 BCE) | The palace cellar at Tel Kabri holds around 2,000 liters of flavored wine. |
| Late Bronze Age (14th century BCE) | A shipwreck at Uluburun carried about 150 Canaanite jars filled with terebinth resin, and pollen in the resin points to Israel. |
| Iron Age | Wine and oil presses spread across Philistia and Judah, with oil production on an industrial scale at Ekron. |
An Egyptian tale from around 1875 BCE, The Story of Sinuhe, describes the land of Canaan as one where wine flowed more freely than water. It is a literary text, but it shows how Egyptians saw the region’s abundance. Scholars still debate how much wine was exported in the earliest periods and how much stayed local.
Taste and see. We can include a tasting stop and visits to the sites mentioned here: Tel es-Safi/Gath, Tel Kabri in the Galilee, Tel Rehov and the City of David. Contact us to plan a private tour with a taste of biblical times, or read what people ate in ancient Israel. Greetings from King Solomon!
Sources and further reading
Koh, Yasur-Landau and Cline, 2014, “Characterizing a Middle Bronze Palatial Wine Cellar from Tel Kabri, Israel,” PLoS ONE; Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Israel Antiquities Authority press materials on the revived-yeast beer, May 2019; Bloch et al., 2010, PNAS (Tel Rehov beehives); Hitchcock, Horwitz, Boaretto and Maeir, 2015, “One Philistine’s Trash Is an Archaeologist’s Treasure: Feasting at Iron Age I Tell es-Safi/Gath,” Near Eastern Archaeology; Genz, 2003, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology; Penn Museum, Canaan and Ancient Israel.