A Gift From the Gods
Beer was also a major part of Egyptian civilization. In ancient Egypt, it was believed that beer was a gift from the Son God “Ra”. Since it was said to come from a God, beer was considered vastly important in daily life. Also beer was considered like “liquid bread”, containing a low alcohol level (3% by volume) and was packed with minerals and vitamins. This meant that beer was a major food item that most adults, and even children would consume as a basic food. Since it was so important to daily Egyptian life, it was even used as their currency. Workers, such as those who built the pyramids, were given chips at the end of each day that would depict how many jugs of beer they earned. For a worker building the Pyramid of Giza, the daily wage was a gallon of beer per day. In total, it cost about 231,414,717 gallons of beer to build the Pyramid of Giza. In Egypt beer was also used to cure illnesses such as gum disease by drinking beer and bowl discomforts by burning the remnants of beer making and having the smoke it creates flow threw the anal gland. The biggest impact of beer in relation to medical use was the chemical “Tetracycline”. Tetracycline is “An antibiotic, C 22 H 24 H 2 O 8 , derived from chlortetracycline, used in medicine to treat a broad variety of infections”[1]. This chemical was not discovered until 1928 in the United States; however, it has been found in the bones of mummies from ancient Egypt. This antibiotic turned out to be found in beer, something the Egyptians consumed daily, which probably helped them stay healthy.