Mystery Drink Shedeh Shedeh is a mysterious ancient Egyptian drink whose contents remained unknown for many centuries. Scholars around the world argued if it was a wine made from pomegranates or maybe a grape wine? The production of Shedeh was described only once in...
The First Golden Straw The Maykop (Maikop; Majkop) culture was an Early Bronze Age culture in the region of southern Russia and the north-western Caucasus between 4000 – 3200 BC. The eponymous site is the town of Maykop, Russia, where a large kurgan (mound) was...
Kottabos The famous game of kottabos was fashionable in Athens in the 6th to 5th century BC and became a widespread passion in southern Italy until ca. the 4th century BC. The idea of the game was the “artful throwing of wine” consumed from a bowl (kylix)...
Cleopatra’s Pearls Cleopatra’s pearls (also called Cleopatra’s banquet) is a famous bet described of Pliny The Elder (Natural History 9.119-21). The last of the Egyptian Queens owned the two greatest pearls of her time which had been given to her by...
Maria Prophetissa Maria Prophetissa (also Maria Prophetissima, Maria the Jewess, Maria the Hebrew, or “daughter of Plato”) lived sometime between the 1st and 3rd century A.D. in Alexandria, Egypt. She is a key figure in Hellenistic Alchemy. Zosimos from...
Symposium Symposium originally stood for “drinking together” that took place after a meal of a banquet in ancient Greece. Poetry and music were central to the pleasures of a symposium. In Ancient Greece guests would gather around the altar of the home after the meal...
