New tools tell wine's ancient tales

Chemical traces of medicinal herbs identified in ancient Egyptian wine jugs demonstrate that the culture employed herbal remedies 1500 years earlier than previously thought, reports linkurl:a study;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/04/13/0811578106 in this week's PNAS. Yellow residue visible on a pieceof a wine vessel from about 3150 BC Image: German Archaeological Institute, Cairo The findings directly confirm the use of remedies described in a series of medical papyri written around 185

Yellow residue visible on a piece
of a wine vessel from about 3150 BC
Image: German Archaeological Institute, Cairo

The findings directly confirm the use of remedies described in a series of medical papyri written around 1850 BC, and point to the culture's use of wine as a vehicle for the delivery of medicine, the researchers write. "I think this is a really neat paper," said linkurl:Dennis Stevenson,;http://sciweb.nybg.org/Science2/Profile_8.asp vice president of research at the New York Botanical Garden, who was not involved in the research. "They have used archeology and ethnobotany combined with modern technology involving chemistry to build knowledge of what people were doing, what they were using." The papyri record has, until now, been the primary evidence for the Egyptian materia medica. It contains descriptions of more than 1,000 prescriptions, some of which are difficult to decipher since 80% of hieroglyphic plant names have so far defied translation. The researchers, led by linkurl:Patrick McGovern;http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/exhibits/online_exhibits/wine/wineintro.html at the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, reanalyzed two sets of samples of residue, taken from pottery dating from 1850 BC and from 3150 BC. Researchers had first analyzed the samples in 1994, but McGovern and his colleagues decided to take another look to make use of new techniques. First, the team verified that the vessels had contained wine by confirming the presence of one of its components, tartaric acid. They then employed a highly sensitive chemical technique to the yellow residue in the vessels to identify the compounds it contained. Finally, they dug into the chemical literature, using bioinformatics tools to determine the nature of the ancient compounds. The analysis identified a group of relatively rare compounds that are known to be present in a number of herbs and plants, including tree resins (possibly used as a preservative), juniper berries, rosemary, mint, camphor, savory, Artemisia, coriander, sage and thyme. This suggests that one or more of them were likely additives to the wine, the researchers wrote. They were also able to determine the probable geographical origin of the compounds. The older sample, taken from the 3150 BC vessels, contained residues from plants native to Jordan, Syria and Israel; Egypt's wine industry was not yet established at that time, and the wine was probably imported to the country from the eastern Mediterranean region. The residue's yellow hue indicates the jugs probably held white wine, despite the traces of resveratrol found, said McGovern. Resveratrol, which has been shown to linkurl:extend lifespan;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17875315 in Drosophila and Caenorhabditis elegans, is present in both red and white wines but is found in higher quantities in red wine. The study, McGovern told The Scientist, chemically confirms some of our scant knowledge of early Egyptian medical practices, which influenced both Greek and Roman medicine. What's more, McGovern mused, the sophisticated use of herbs and other plants by early Egyptian physicians may hold some promise for current medical researchers. More about the photo: The inside of this wine vessel sherd contains a yellowish residue, the accumulation of organic materials from the upper surface of the wine that once filled the inside of a jar from the tomb of Scorpion I at Abydos, one of the first kings of Egypt, ca. 3150 B.C. The residue, forming a circle around the vessel's interior, is slanted off from the horizontal because the jar with its liquid was tilted in antiquity. Analyses showed that herbs including balm, coriander, mint, sage and many more were steeped in the wine, to which pine resin and fig were also added. Ht. of sherd 33.5 cm.
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[ 20th April 2007]