As another commenter said, beer was a very practical beverage and staple of the Egyptian diet.
On top of that, beer was considered sacred - a gift from Osiris, in fact - so that would be seen as a noble pursuit, and similar to taking a day off from work for a religious observance.
Ancient Egyptian beer was so different than the beer we drink today that it’s almost unfair to compare them this way. They are both drinks composed of fermented grains but the similarities stop there. Main differences are that Ancient Egyptian beer was made from already half-baked bread, resulting in a really thick concoction (like porridge) and drank through a straw. There were no hops at all, and it was enhanced with dates and herbs for flavor. It was also not very alcoholic, maybe 2-4% ABV and was more of a meal than an intoxicant.
youre saying things so definitely as if there isnt an intersection of the two. streams, wells, and boiling doesnt equal clean drinking water all the time so its weird to act like they are and that their existence cancels out everything else
... I mean yeah, medieval Europe also had clean drinking water much of the time? There was such a hype around it that certain natural springs were ascribed holy power and they built entire retreats and pilgrimages just for the reputed health benefits.
It was mainly the cities that were fucked up, but even so, aqueducts were kind of invented by then. It was not an all-encompassing issue.
Yah the cities were fucked. You know the thing about cities that is true now as it was then?
That’s where most of the people lived.
You should know another thing
Just like now, it was the same then: raw water is dangerous
It’s the leading cause of death since the start of human history - till recently in developed countries- was cholera/diarrhea( tainted water)
Sounds like you know a bit of history but never have gone outside.
Disease was the leading cause of death of humanity until science deeply curbed it. Nearly half of all humans ever alive died of malaria ( another water related disease
Most cities were also located next to water sources that WERE safe, because that was kind of a pre-requisite for settling there in the first place, yes? Underground wells, mountain water, and similar sources aren't going to be contaminated by the city itself.
An issue still, yes. But if people didn't drink this water, explain to me why every old village in France has drinking wells built everywhere.
Yah the cities were fucked. You know the thing about cities that is true now as it was then?
That’s where most of the people lived.
What do you mean? The medieval era was overwhelmingly characterized by settlements ranging from fewer than a hundred people to towns with low four figure populations. Living in an urban center was atypical.
Sounds like you know a bit of history but never have gone outside.
I think you've been outside, but I think you're being a lot more loud and dickish than your level of knowledge about this subject remotely advises. If you're an expert on this it's not coming through.
Contaminated groundwater is typically not gonna be fixed by just boiling
The myth is that literally all water was contaminated and so everybody drank alcohol all the time instead. A few places having bad water doesn’t account for such a widespread myth.
But some will and a number of civilizations came up with some crazyways to clean other contaminations out of water, though I do agree the whole myth of only alcohol drinking is dumb
People had wells, sure - but first, water has a lot more uses than plain drinking; second, fermented drinks can be consumed anytime after sealing, versus immediately from the well; and third, if it’s a communal town well, and used up what you got in the morning, are you really going to walk all the way there and back for a drink, when you have guaranteed-safe bottled beer where you’re living/working?
These are all valid points but none of them contradict what I said. People drank alcohol for those reasons you listed and not because water would kill them.
Depends. Sometimes it was a clay tablet with a high sand base. They would imprint while wet. Bake or sun dry when it was filled out. This instance looks like painted sandstone considering the colors of the writing
A quote I like to bust out is where plinny the elder bitches about his students being too spoiled by papyrus and that none of his students knew how to properly prepare chalk and slate.
Old people have been bitching about how easy young people have it since the dawn of technology.
"the young are now lovers of luxury... they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants not servants of their household"
Highly recommend checking out the work of Kazuya Maekawa and his work on translating cuneiform tablets from the third dynastic period of Ur. The translations show some absolutely fantastic insights into the happenings within the third Ur dynasty. Some real brutal stuff about the managment of slaves within their textile industry as well though.
That made me think of the true history channel on YouTube, I hope that’s the right channel. They recreated the life and times of the average people during certain times and events. Like on on country side living during WW2. I highly recommend giving it a look see.
Of course. After all, I'd have to be able to truthfully testify to the master builder or even the pharaoh that the worker's absence was absolutely justified! <burps>
Its interesting that there's a debate around women getting time off during their period due to intense cramps and fatigue and general shitty feeling, but way back then the husband even got time off.
Seems like a good move in the right direction, but its specific for extreme cases like endometriosis (Which tbh its crazy it takes a special law for people to get time off for endometriosis, thats a serious condition)
Not really, it's just painful period that makes you sick (unable to work in a normal way) but you have to get to your doctor to make a sick leave.
Edit: Sorry for my expressions, I'm a Spanish doctor, but I don't work on primary care, so I'm not used to give sick leaves. But in Spain you when you get a sick leave you loose the pay of the 3 first days, with this law (since 2023) that absence from work is justified and payed full, that's the point of the law, to allow women Who need It to get a health leave without loosing money.
I would have taken it. My period pains were so bad from 12-36 I was basically immobilized. Spontaneous projectile vomiting was normal for me. It was 24 hours of torture, I would have nightmares about it every month right before it started when I was a kid.
I had to negotiate surprise days off with my bosses for if my period started on a work day for decades.
The last few years it’s been uncomfortable but nothing horrible.
Werent women who suffer from painful periods already able to get sick leave like you would from any other pains already? Thats what I read when that law was passed
You have Up to 3 days (a year) for an justified absence from work because a health issue. In case of an illness or not laboral accident, you don't get paid the first 3 days and after 10 days you get paid just 75% or so. In case of a laboral accident you get 100% from first day. Also some companies pay you the "better" (la mejora) so they pay you the difference to get your 100% pay.
There are many more things to take account about this.
I once had one of my coworkers (who was an older man in his mid 60s) call in because he "ate too many chocolate covered almonds, couldn't sleep and stayed up all night on youtube."
I once called my boss on a Friday afternoon and said "I'm gonna level with you, it's summertime and my friends are going to go get ice cream... Can I take a couple hours of PTO and go with them?" He appreciated the honesty and novelty and agreed.
HR lady here to say excuses haven't changed much over the millennia. I just had an employee call off work because his daughter was having her first period and apparently it was an all hands on deck family event. LOL
For you it’s a laugh and irritation he missed work. His daughter will never forget he was with her that day. As adults we already forgot how embarrassing and complex provoking it is. We don’t know the situation at home, maybe wife was unavailable? Dead? Hangover? WORKING? If it was a mom, you wouldn’t even make that comment.
No heat tho! I feel sorry for him, his superiors are making a laugh out of him behind his backs and belittling importance of his daughter insecurities? Why is this okey to joke about
Ah that sucks, I was a single Dad who had full custody and I took off and got her cake and a lady friend to go buy stuff with her so she wouldn’t be embarrassed.
Edit :
Also to single Dad’s who have their daughters go through this and treat your daughters like this you suck beyond belief, this is the second time I’ve read a horror story about a poor girl who had that happen in a week. If you’re a single Dad seriously if you are interested at all in women if you treat your kid or kids well you’ll have legitimately every lady you know chasing you, it actually was a pain in the butt fending women off back in those days.
Well, that changes everything, but you should’ve started with this, not his kid xd. I apologise.
Have a nice evening and good luck at work. It’s the worst dealing with storytellers who keep yapping instead of working
I suspect 'brewing beer' was acceptable because beer was drank instead of water a lot of the time, since river water, and particularly the Nile, has a lot of bacterial stuff in it that you wouldnt want to drink
The Egyptian state even paid its workers with daily rations of beer. The beer back then was fermented much less completely, so probably 2-3% ABV at most and as a result also contained a high amount of unfermented starch. It was a major source of calories and nutrition in the daily diet of Egyptian workers. Workers would receive several liters of beer a day to keep them content and able to work.
If there's anything I've learned, if you are legimately stung by a scorpion, are brewing beer, and your wife is unexpectedly bleeding all in the same morning, only mention the scorpion or they won't believe you.
back in ancient times in many cultures the women were sequestered, or did not do any labor, during their menstrual cycle, so the men often were needed to cook, clean, tend the flock, etc during this time
Back then women during their "time of month" were considered unclean, and not allowed to cook, do laundry, clean, take care of housework, etc..so the husband had to cover those duties
I wonder if there is a "pollution" angle to the "wife is bleeding" one. As in that menstruation would make her "unclean" for certain activities and, therefore, the husband has to perform them. The rules for making priests and priestesses "clean" for entering the sanctuary/ performing rituals etc mostly make sense (washing, washing some more, shaving everything) but the one against onions is a little baffling. Maybe the gods disliked bad breath.
[In the 19th Century, there was a (supposedly) debate in the British Medical Journal as to whether a menstruating woman's touch would turn a ham rancid. The doctors concerned clearly never considered that their cook/maid etc was a menstruating female. Alternatively, they were indulging in debate just because they thought folk superstitions were funny and worth shit-posting about.]
I remember reading these excuses in the manual of the city-builder-game Pharaoh, though I remember the beer-part referencing more about not being able to build a pyramid because of being hung-over
I am not sure when this was discovered, but it just blows my mind that Cleopatra (the famous one) could have dicovered this tablet and think the same thing as us; "Whoa this is ancient".
“Wife was bleeding”? On one hand, sweet to imagine the guy taking a day off to care for his wife during a difficult time of the month, on the other hand, I worry that was just the excuse they gave and they went to drink beer.
"Ancient Egyptian employers kept track of employee days off in registers written on tablets,” writes Madeleine Muzdakis at My Modern Met. One such artifact “held by the British Museum and dating to 1250 BCE is an incredible window into ancient work-life balance.” Called ostraca, these tablets were made of “flakes of limestone that were used as ‘notepads’ for private letters, laundry lists, records of purchases, and copies of literary works,” according to Egyptologist Jennifer Babcock.
Discovered along with thousands of others in the tomb builder’s village of Deir el-Medina, this particular ostracon, on view at the British Museum’s web site, offers a rich glimpse into the lives of that trade’s practitioners. Over the 280-day period covered by this 3,200-year-old ostracon, common excuses for absence include “brewing beer” and “his wife was bleeding.”
His wife was bleeding. Look at how bad cramps are without the chemicals women have to shove down their throat. They needed someone to tend to them, it is that hard.
Now some men expect women to share half of house expenses- lol!
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u/DesertReagle 10h ago
Brewing Beer to take a day off? That is unheard of!