WELCOME!
Welcome to AncientStills.com, where we explore distillation design through the centuries.As you scroll down, you will find articles that we are researching about ancient stills and references. This research is part of a larger goal of trying to figure out how ancient civilizations combined fermentation, baking, and distillation to make alcoholic beverages.
Selected Writings
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Some Notes on Fleece
The snowy fleece, and wind the twisted wool.The goddess softly shook her silken vest, That shed perfumes, and whispering thus address’d: Homer, The Illiad Linear B sign 145 LANA, a version of which is shown below, is the generally accepted ideogram for wool. Lana is Latin for “wool” and in Greek lenos, wolle in German,…
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Tribikos Still in operation
Nanodistilling.com has announced that the Tribikos Still, after Mary the Jewess (0-200 CE) and Zosimos of Panopolis (300 CE), is functionally viable. Reconstructed in modern borosilicate glass, this still design was capable of producing up to 85% purity alcohol using only an air-cooled design.
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Notes from the Albany, NY Institute of History and Art
Today, I visited the Albany Institute of History and Art to visit the famed mummy of Ankhefenmut. Adjoining the sarcophagus exhibit was a very tastefully-done exhibit of potteries and vessels from Ancient Egypt, with some excellent context around beer and wine. Below are some items of interest regarding materials and vessel shapes. Beer in ancient…
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More on Perfumes at TT175
“I shall be anointed with first-class oil and clothed in top linen, and I shall sit on that which makes Maat live, with my back to the back of those gods at the sky’s north—the Imperishable Stars, and I shall not perish; the unpassing ones, and I shall not pass; the unwaning ones, and I…
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Chemically decoding the ancient blue lotus
The blue lotus water lily is the heraldic symbol of the Upper Nile of Egypt. This ancient and mystic flower, Nymphaea caerulea, appears throughout the culture and religion of ancient Egypt. The blue water lily grows well along the Nile River and may have been farmed and harvested for thousands of years (Viljoen, Cherise; Notten,…
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Mesopotamian Maceration
“I anoint myself everyday with oil, burn perfumes and use cosmetics that make me worthier of worshipping thee.” Nebechudnezzar II, in supplication to Marduk, David Pybus and Charles Sell, The Chemistry of Fragrances, The Royal Society of Chemistry, 1999 Very early in Mesopotamia some aromatics were harvested from within the region while others were imported…
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Combing the Cairo Museum
Literal WARM greetings from Egypt! I have spent some time here in the Egypt and National Museums in Cairo looking into their ancient culture and was hoping to find some information about their distillation techniques and perhaps try some local spirits. I’m sorry to report that I haven’t found much at all, from Cairo down…