Herbs added to 5,100-year-old Egyptian wine

Herbs have been detected in wine from the tomb of one of ancient Egypt's first rulers, many centuries before the civilization's known use of herbal remedies in alcoholic beverages, according to a study published Monday.

The findings from a wine jar dated to 5100 B.C. provide concrete evidence of ancient Egyptian organic medicine, which had only been ambiguously referred to in later papyrus documents, said Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, one of the researchers.

Tests on one of 700 jars buried with Scorpion I in his tomb at Abydos about 3100 B.C. confirmed that the vessel contained wine, according to the paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The tests also detected tree resin, which was used as a preservative and for medical purposes, and other chemicals that make up various herbs.

"There were a lot of additives in this wine, and it fits very well with the later Egyptian pharmacology texts, the medical papyri that describe similar kinds of alcoholic beverages with herbs in them," McGovern said.

"So the assumption is that, although we're 1500 years before the earliest medical papyrus, in fact we're looking at medicinal wine," he said.