Thonis/ Herakleion Location of the site of Plinthine, on the taenia An Egyptian grand ridge, in the Mareotis region. Mediterranean sea

cru: production Canopic Mareotis Lake Branch

taenia ridge Plinthine/ at Plinthine Kom el-Nogous Marea Peninsula 10/08/2019 Saïs Google Maps Taposiris Magna

Kom Bahig Kom Firin Naukratis Recent archaeological discoveries as well as archaeobotanical and environmental studies in Plinthine shed new light on wine production at this small village on the taenia ridge between the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Mareotis, writes Bérangère Redon. was

practised here from the New Kingdom to the Ptolemaic period. For Map: BingMap image adapted by B. Redon the first time, we gain information on the grape varieties and wine- making process in an area whose were once famous but are still little known within archaeology. Below: plan of Kom el-Nugus / Plinthine and its vicinity, with the find spots of wine-production remains. Wine production in ancient Kingdom onward, especially on the fringes of Wine in ancient Egypt? The country is not the Nile delta where the first vines might have Plinthine (Kom el-Nugus - ) N

renowned for its wines in Pharaonic times, and been imported from the Near East. While 2012-2018 Seasons

General Plan - scale 1/3000e in the classical literature the Egyptians are mentioned in written sources, represented on Architectural survey: M. Vanpeene - Th. Fournet CAD: M. Vanpeene Topographican survey: Th. Arnoux - O. Onézime - M. Vanpeene considered as beer drinkers. The famous paintings adorning the tombs of the Theban Kom el-Nugus (from Late New Kingdom to Roman period) Saite grape grinder historian of the 5th century BC, Herodotus, valley, and evoked by the thousands of labels Imagery ©2019 Landsat / Copernicus, Data(sect. SIO, 6) NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Map data ©2019 Mapa GISrael, ORION- 50 km ME Above: map of northern even states that the inhabitants of the country found with the jars that contained the precious Egypt, showing the did not grow vines on their soil (II, 77). Wine- liquid, the production of wine in pharaonic Mareotis region. making and -consumption in Egypt is usually Egypt has never been studied in the field. This associated with the arrival of wine-drinking is because until recently, no archaeological populations in Egypt after the conquest of evidence of a pharaonic winery has been found, in 331 BC, for which other than a very poorly preserved example View from Kom el- there are indeed numerous papyrological and at Tell el-Dab’a Ptolemaic town Nogous to the west, with archaeological data (dozens of wineries have One of the most famous Egyptian vintages New Kingdom pottery fig trees now replacing (and ovens?) the ancient . been excavated, mainly of the Roman and was grown on the territory called ‘the Western The Osiris temple of Byzantine periods). River’, mentioned on a few dozens of jar labels Taposiris is visible in the However, viticulture is evidenced in Egypt found in Tell el-Amarna (representing more than Ptolemaic grape grinder background. from the Predynastic period and the Old 70 percent of the jar labels ever found at the Ptolemaic Necropolis

Photo: MFTMP / B. Redon 0 50 100 200 400 m Wine-production evidence Modern buildings New Kingdom Remains Roads Ancient buildings (certain, uncertain) Map: MFTMP / M. Vanpeene, Th. Fournet

site). The ‘Western River’ probably merged with wine age (XVII, 1, 14). Among the vintages or included the Mareotis region, on the shores produced in the region, the wine of the taenia, of Lake Mareotis (nowadays Maryut), located at the sandstone ridge separating the Mediterranean the gates of Alexandria and well known for its Sea from Lake Mareotis, was judged of better wine production in Roman and Byzantine times. quality than the wine from the southern Mareotis The quality of the Mareotis wine is praised by area by Athenaeus, an Egyptian author of the Latin poets, such as Virgil and Horace. According 2nd century AD. According to him, ‘the taeniotic to them, it was white, sweet, and aromatic. wine, in addition to being sweet, [was] somewhat Strabo even says that the ancients let the Mareotis spicy and slightly astringent’ (I, 33).

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https://www.google.com/maps/@30.7038872,30.9598139,291827m/data=!3m1!1e3 1/1 AN EGYPTIAN GRAND CRU: WINE PRODUCTION AT PLINTHINE

the stamped wine jar may suggest that a royal Other tomb paintings show that the men were was cultivated at Plinthine during the singing while pressing the grapes, and hold Photogrammetric Grape pips, skin, pedicel Eighteenth Dynasty. poles or strings attached to the roof or to the image of the Saite grape and stalk fragments grinder at Plinthine. found in the Plinthine After a period not well-documented on the hips or shoulders of their neighbours in order samples dated to the site so far, wine production clearly intensifies not to slip on the grapes. Treading was indeed Saite period. again during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, as not all that easy, as the quick onset of fermentation while grapes were being pressed Image: MFTMP / M. Vanpeene meant that workers were probably a little drunk while pressing. The third period of wine production evidenced at Plinthine dates to the Ptolemaic period. A few decades after Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt, a community of new inhabitants of Hellenic origin settled on Photo: MFTMP / G. Polin (Ifao) the site, as shown by their funerary customs

Left: detail of the treading platform, built from limestone slabs and covered with mortar. Right: the entrance to the Saite grape grinder of Plinthine. Below: a reconstruction of the Saite grape grinder. Plinthine – a wine-producing village With the support of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (Ifao), and the Arpamed fund, the French mission of Taposiris Magna and Plinthine (MFTMP) recently launched a project dedicated to the study of the wine production of a taeniotic site – Plinthine – over the longue durée from the pharaonic period to the end Photo: MFTMP / G. Polin (Ifao) Photo: MFTMP / G. Polin (Ifao) of Ptolemaic era. Coupling soil analyses, the study of grape varieties and excavations, the and the necropolis, scattered pottery dated shown by the discovery of an exceptionally analysis focus on the whole production chain, to the New Kingdom is visible on the surface. well-preserved grape grinder, whose from the grape seed to the jar. construction can be securely dated to the Plinthine is remarkably situated on the shores Three phases of viticulture at Plinthine second half of the 7th century BC. It is located of the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Maryut, 2 Interestingly, Hellanikos, a Greek author of in a vaulted room that belongs to a complex km east of Taposiris Magna, a well-known city the 5th century BC (quoted by Athenaeus I, building still only partly excavated, and is built occupied from the Ptolemaic period to early 60), reports that viticulture was invented at in a very fine local limestone, covered with medieval times, in the extreme north-west of Plinthine. This is likely a legend, but our recent mortar. The grinder consisted of a raised what Herodotus considered as the territory finds show that wine production began well treading platform (1.89 x 2.14 m) where the of Egypt. The site consists of a large, horse- before the mention of Hellanikos, probably grapes were pressed underfoot by several shoe-shaped kom (Kom el-Nugus), during the New Kingdom, and that this tradition people, and a monolithic vat of 9 hl into which 11 m high, atop the ridge. Our excavations lasted for more than a millennium, with the juice flowed from the platform through a have shown traces of occupation from the Late unexpected intensity. drain. A unique example in pharaonic Egypt, New Kingdom to the Late Ptolemaic or Early First evidence was discovered in 2015, during its closest parallels can be found in the paintings Roman period. It overlooks a village, built on a survey in the ‘New Kingdom area’, where that adorned the tomb walls of the Valley of the southern slope of the ridge, looking toward several ovens and ceramics, including a wine Nobles in Thebes, in particular in the tomb of Lake Mareotis, whose last phase of occupation jar stamped with the name of the eldest Nakht (TT 52). It is also very similar to the – the only one we have studied so far – dates daughter of Akhenaten, Merytaten, were winery depicted in the Petosiris tomb, dated back to the . Dated to the found. Besides other artefacts (among them to the early Hellenistic period, except for the same period, the necropolis of Plinthine is a limestone stela of Sety II) that attest a royal lion-head drain, which becomes common only situated 500 m to the west. Between the kom presence on the site during the next dynasty, during the Graeco-Roman period in Egypt. Image: MFTMP / M. Vanpeene

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and offerings, and some rare inscriptions. They pressed at Plinthine during the Twenty-sixth Sections and plan of the Saite grape grinder. clearly perpetuated the wine tradition of Dynasty and in the Ptolemaic period, with, Plinthine, as shown by the discovery of the respectively, 28 and 15 different grape varieties only wine-producing villa in Mareotis that can identified so far, ranging from species close to securely be dated to the Ptolemaic period. It the wild vine to varieties well-known elsewhere is located at the fringes of the necropolis and in the Middle East or Greece. The cépages is organised around a grape grinder, similar to assemblage change between the two periods the earlier, Saite one (with a treading platform may perhaps reflect the evolution of the and a deep vat for the juice), but larger. The customers’ taste, though it could also be due work conducted by Olivier Callot (CNRS, to technological and techno-biological transfers Lyon) and then Louis Dautais (Université that took place after the Greek conquest, Montpellier III) show that it was abandoned when many Hellenes (in the broad sense of in the second half of the Ptolemaic period. Like the word) came to settle in Egypt and the Saite one, the Ptolemaic wine factory was especially in Alexandria and the nearby housed within a larger building, which might Mareotis area. However, the evolution of the have been a private residence, indicating that diversity of the cultivated grapes is also a wine production occurred in a domestic manifestation of attempts to adapt varieties

context. The Saite treading platform of the to the Plinthine . Photo: J.-Fr. Gout (Ifao) 7th century BC could likley produce 400 l in one go, the capacity of the Ptolemaic platform Trading networks might have been twice as much. Both represent Thanks to the production of wine on its significant quantities, though, of course, they slopes during pharaonic times, Plinthine was

are small compared to the later large-scale Image: MFTMP / M. Vanpeene at the heart of commercial networks since the production of some villas of the Roman world. precious beverage was first produced, initially for consumers living in the Nile Valley. While Soil analysis and wine quality not yet identified with certainty, the Plinthine Such continuity in the Plinthine wine cru is likely to be one of the wines well-known production is due above all to the quality of from Egyptian sources, drunk at the tables of the terroir and the composition of soils that the pharaohs and the social elites as ‘wine of seem to be partiularly suitable for viticulture, the Western River’. Probably favoured by its as demonstrated by the geomorphological location on the Mediterranean coast, Plinthine The New Kingdom grape grinder shown in analyses conducted by Maël Crépy (post-doc was also part of Mediterranean trade during the tomb of Nakht at CNRS): the soil is composed of a mix of the Saite period, and the local production of Thebes (TT 52) (after substratum fragments, fine siliceous sand wine in Plinthine is contemporaneous with Davies 1917, pl. XXIIIB, XXVI). coming from the desert to the south and massive imports of wine amphorae from coarse calcareous sand originating from the eastern Greece (Samos, Chios, Lesbos, seashore, with a proportion of silt and clay and charcoal have been studied, but their Clazomenes, Athens, etc.), Cyprus and the that is lower in the upper part of the ridge chronology is not well established and they Phoenician world that are currently studied than nearer the lake, resulting in good drainage were not taken into account for this article). by Mikaël Pesenti. This raises many questions Image: MFTMP / M. Vanpeene characteristics and making the soil easier to All the soil samples analyzed by Charlène about the techno-biological transfers these work. It is also significant that the samples Bouchaud (CNRS) and Menna el-Dorry (MoA exchanges might have facilitated before the Top: the early taken at Plinthine are less alkaline than those and IFAO), and dated to these two periods Ptolemaic period and about the interface role Hellenistic grape grinder of the Petosiris coming from Taposiris Magna. Plinthine was contain grape remains, while other species that Plinthine certainly played at a time when tomb at Tuna el-Gebel. definitely the best place in the area to produce grown at the site are few and derive solely Egypt was opening up to the Mediterranean. wine of quality. from inhabitants’ food and wood requirements. This is one of the questions the next campaigns Above: photo- grammetric image of This undoubtedly stimulated the central role The raison d’être of the village seems indeed will try to answer. the Ptolemaic villa played by viticulture at the site, in particular to have been the production of wine, at least and its grape grinder, during the Saite and Ptolemaic periods, as under the Saite and Ptolemaic dynasties. near the necropolis of Plinthine. demonstrated by the discovery of thousands Was the Plinthine wine a grand cru or a of grape pips, stems or fragments of grape skin piquette? Archaeobotanical research has not and vinegrape charcoal fragments during our yet made it clear. The morphometric study Bérangère Redon (CNRS, Lyon) is director of • Left: detail of the excavations (no New Kingdom levels have conducted by Clémence Pagnoux (post-doc the French mission of Taposiris Magna and Plinthine Ptolemaic grape been sampled so far; probable Third École française d’Athènes) shows that (MFTMP). More information on the mission can grinder of Plinthine: the Intermediate Period layers with grape seeds numerous grape varieties were grown and be found at: www.taposiris.hypotheses.org Photo: MFTMP / G. Polin (Ifao) lower vat.

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