ARCE-NT: Brewing Beer and Building Pyramids by Dr. Omar D. Foda

Did you know a worker on the Pyramids of Giza asked his boss to be excused from work because he had to brew beer? Could you imagine providing your boss with a reason like that and her agreeing to it? This story, like the best history, compressed the time and space between us and our ancestors. But whose beer-drinking ancestors were these? If you had asked many Westerners, they would have said they were theirs. If you had asked Egyptians, on the other hand, what would they have said? Some would have said they were, but others might have disavowed them. Using historical research and his own personal history, he argued that these different claims on Ancient Egyptians spoke to how we viewed Egypt and how those views had been heavily shaped by colonialism, Egyptomania, and Orientalism. He also argued that understanding the real history of beer in Egypt should have forced us to reconsider depictions of Egypt, past and present. Learn more: https://arce.org/event/members-only-v...