Brewing Beer with Biblical Yeast

June 22 2023

While wine is the alcoholic beverage of choice in the Hebrew Bible, beer too was known to the ancient Near East. Archaeologists have, for instance, found beer vessels from biblical times used by the Philistines—the Israelites’ enemies living on the Mediterranean coast. Melanie Lidman describes the entrepreneurs and scientists selling yeast from these containers to those who wish to recreate the ancient brews:

An interdisciplinary team of researchers, archaeologists, and brewmasters in Israel first isolated 5,000-year-old yeast in 2019. . . . But now, the fruits of that discovery are about to become available for hobby brewers and sourdough aficionados everywhere.

Using organic residue analysis, scientists were able to identify organic molecules that had survived in the matrix of the ceramics over the years, including the yeast microorganism. For a few vessels, the scientists sequenced the full microbiome inside of the vessel, discovering ancient bacteria and viruses in addition to the yeast microorganism, [the microbiologist] Ronen Hazan said. He said a PCR yeast test, similar to the PCR coronavirus test, can also quickly and cheaply determine the presence of yeast inside a vessel.

Beer was a basic commodity in the ancient world and was consumed by rich, poor, adults, and children, as well as used in religious ritual, according to [the archaeologist Yitzḥak] Paz. Ancient beer was not the clear amber substance we recognize today, but would have been filled with sediment, and produced from a variety of grains, including millet, corn, sorghum, and wheat. The vessels that provided the yeast organisms had filtered spouts, like a watering can, to keep the sediment out of the drinker’s glass.

A Times of Israel reporter who tried one of the first iterations of beer brewed with the ancient yeast in 2019 said at the time it was “slightly sweet, with a subtle tang, . . . and tasted [of] banana and other fruits.”

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Alcohol, Ancient Israel, Archaeology, Hebrew Bible, Philistines

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023