The Recipe for Beer in Codex Marcianus Graecus 299: A New Critical Text with Historical and Linguistic Commentary
Abstract
This article clarifies uncertainties about the date, origin, brewing procedure, and text of a technical treatise on brewing beer that has been central to the ancient history of food and drink. This recipe for beer, found in an alchemical codex associated with the epitomized works of Zosimus of Panopolis, cannot plausibly be earlier than the Byzantine period. Ethnography involving an Ethiopian informant provides a model for assigning temporal values to the brewing procedures in the technical treatise. Based on a comparison with other Byzantine texts, the bread from which the beer is made must be baked incompletely before being used for brewing. The text of the recipe is emended, because the fermenting vessel cannot be a ‘cage’ and is very likely the ‘ceramic bread-oven’ that is used also in other alchemical procedures.
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