Wine find in 5,000-year-old queen’s tomb

Hundreds of wine glasses, some of them still sealed and containing the remains of wine, have been found in the tomb of the Egyptian queen Meret-Neith in Abydos, Egypt.

She lived 5,000 years ago and is considered to have been the most powerful woman of her time.

The queen’s monumental burial chamber in the desert is built of unburnt clay brick, ordinary clay and wood. But what surprised archaeologist Christiana Köhler, who works everyday at the University of Vienna, and her colleagues was the amount of wine glasses. In the grave were hundreds of large wine glasses, some of them completely untouched, the University of Vienna writes in a press release.

However, the liquid has dried and the researchers cannot say whether the mug contained red or white wine. But organic remains, grape seeds and crystals have been recovered and are now being analysed.

The archaeologists were also struck by the amount of inscriptions in the tomb, which showed, among other things, that the queen was responsible for authorities such as the Ministry of Finance at the time.

It strengthens the thesis that Queen Meret-Neith, who lived about 3,000 years before Christ during Egypt’s First Dynasty, was extremely powerful. She may have been the first pharaoh of ancient Egypt, the researchers speculate.

Archaeologists from Germany and Austria are working on the excavations, which are taking place in collaboration with Egyptian authorities.