Switzerland is a hub for commodity trading. Did you know that this activity represents 4% of Swiss GDP, and even 22% of tax revenue for the canton of Geneva? This week we are talking regarding barley. We will analyze funerary practices with barley grains. We will ask ourselves the question: “how did we see beer? This gives us the opportunity to admire the work: Model of a brewer in painted limestone (circa 2200-2033 BC) which is kept in the Louvre Museum.
Funerary Practice – Barleycorns
The Egyptians used to bury mummies with barleycorn necklaces. Several works mention barley grains coming from burials.
How was beer viewed?
In antiquity and the Middle Ages, beer was considered a healthier drink than water, which was often contaminated with bacteria.
It was called “liquid bread” in the Sumerian civilization, from the IVth millennium BC. In Egypt, it was considered a divine drink. In ancient Greece, it is used as medicine.
Measurement unit system: the inch and 3 barley grains
In 1234, Edward II defines that the inch as a unit of measurement should correspond to three grains of barley placed one following the other. Today, the United States continues to use this system.
Brewer model
Beer has therefore played a very important role since antiquity. We find traces of it in antiquity. The work, the model of a brewer in painted limestone (circa 2200-2033 BC) is kept at the Louvre Museum. It was discovered in Dara in Middle Egypt in a mastaba III.
For more barley trivia:
In the same series, “Raw materials and art”:
- Cereals and Van Gogh
- Coffee and culture
- Cotton and Edgar Degas
- Cocoa and Luis Meléndez
- Sugar and Sartre
- Copper and Chardin
- Steel and Gayle Hermick
- Corn and Jean Mortel
- Biogas and Victor Hugo
- Hydrogen and the aerostatic globe
- The wind, Da Vinci and Monnet
- The Sun and Firedrich
- L’or et Klimt
Sources :
Funerary practices applied to children in Egypt during the Lagide and Imperial periods. (archives-ouvertes.fr)
When cereals adorn works of art | Cereals – The blog (lescereales.fr)
Inches – the American unit of measurement at CECIL
Photo credit : Rama, CC BY-SA 3.0 FR, via Wikimedia Commons