Amethyst Wine

A new discovery of an amethyst “hangover” ring.

Smithsonian Magazine. Yavne, South of Tel Aviv circa 300 A.D-600 A.D.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-amethyst-ring-found-in-israel-hangovers-gem-wine-180979000/

Israel is one of the places that winemaking began some 8,000 —10,000 years ago and has been one of the premium wine growing areas in the world for the entire history of civilized humankind.

Long, long ago, as the cult of Yahweh (the God of the Hebrew Bible) began to grow out in the Judean wilderness, it began absorbing the cults and attributes of other local desert gods.

One of the cults Yahweh absorbed was a local wine god named Eshkol, whose name means “grape cluster”, that was celebrated during a harvest festival that today is called Sukkoth or Sukkot. Apparently Yahweh also absorbed portions of a local version of Dionysus, the Greek wine god. Greek was the international language of trade.

Today the Bible is ambiguous at best on the question of whether the Yahweh retained any of that local wine god’s attributes. Whether the Yahweh in the Bible still drinks or not is the subject of fierce debate but the Bible does make it quite clear that Noah enjoyed a pop or two after a good flood.

You remember of course, that Noah built a really big boat and put two of each kind of animal on it. The boat floated around for 40 days and 40 nights until the flood was over, at which point Noah beached it on the nearest mountaintop.

So imagine you are Noah.

It’s been raining a really long time and you’ve been cooped up on a boat with every animal in the world including all living human beings and your wife. You’re a little shaky from all that rocking and you really need some air, so you take a little walk and decide what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.

You’re only 600 years old so your whole life is before you. What’s the first thing you do?

You plant a vineyard of course.

That’s what the Bible says Noah did when he finally got out of that ark (Gen 9:20). He didn’t rush out and start a casino or sacrifice a couple of the more annoying animals that came off the boat. He didn’t set up a nice little boat building business. Or a zoo.

He planted a vineyard.

Later his son Japeth took the winemaking skills he learned from his father and moved to the Mediterranean coast where he founded a new city (Jaffa) which, long after Japeth’s death, became a huge trade center and the main center for exporting wines from Israel to the rest of the world.

You no doubt remember one of Japeth’s descendants— a certain Jonah who’s father was a vintner in a village in the hills near Jaffa. Jonah was, of course, famously swallowed by a whale when he tried to escape God’s will.

Now when Jonah somehow thought he could out run God, where did he run?

Yep. That’s right. Jaffa.

Japeth’s old hangout.

Ships were leaving Jaffa to destinations all over the known world every day.

Jonah, who apparently wasn’t that bright, figured that there must be a place God didn’t know about. He couldn’t be everywhere could He?

Not in those days anyway.

When Jonah reached Jaffa he stowed away on a boat filled with among other things, wine headed to Tarshish in southern Spain just north of the Rock of Gibraltar (Pillars of Hercules in those days.)

He figured God would never find him there.

As it turns out, that was not the best possible decision the old winemaker could have made, what with the big old whale laying out there in the ocean waiting for him to push off from shore.

Today Jaffa is the oldest part of Tel Aviv, Israel.

Byzantine winery and storage, circa 400 A.D-700 A.D. Archaeologists discovered the ring pictured above at the site of a large Byzantine-era wine-making operation. Yaniv Berman / Israel Antiquities Authority

New Modern Excavations in Tel Aviv (Jaffa), Israel

Archaeologists have been excavating a huge winery complex in Tel Aviv (Jaffa) for years. The complex is at least 1600 years old and was operating at the center of the wine export business for longer than that.

As you can see in the picture, the grounds are filled with storage areas, wine pressing facilities, and administration buildings for the winery—tasting rooms too, I suppose.

I don’t think they sold T-shirts but they did have docks for loading up donkey drawn carts with “amphorae”, large clay jars filled with wine, that were shaped to stack on the deck of a ship without rolling off.

Greek Amphorae were filled with wine and shaped to fit together on the deck of a ship so they wouldn’t roll in storms. —-https://amphorae.wordpress.com/project-updates/quote

One day, sometime before 700 A.D., a very wealthy person ( or maybe the winery owner) was walking around the winery.Maybe he or she was just touring the complex or maybe they were a buyer, sampling different wine lots to export.

Whatever they were doing there, they dropped their gold amethyst ring.

It disappeared and wasn’t found for at least 1400 years.

Amethyst Quartz Crystals—part of a larger round geode. If the geode is unbroken it just looks like a round rock. So when you break it open, it feels like magic.

Amethyst Crystals— from Fossil Era Minerals

https://www.fossilera.com/minerals/5-1-dark-purple-amethyst-cluster-top-quality-color

The Magic of Amethyst

“Amethyst” is a purple form of quartz crystals. In Greek the word means literally, “a”—”not”, “methystos”, —”intoxicating.”

Amethyst was worn in rings like this one in the picture at the top of this page to ward off hangovers.

It was also inlaid in wine goblets or worn around their necks in hopes of helping its owner to wake up the next morning without feeling like the Roman army was marching across their tongue.

Per Haaretz, the word amethyst comes from the Greek word amethystos, meaning “not intoxicating,” and is related to medhu, meaning mead. Ancient Greeks sometimes incorporated amethysts into wine glasses or wore the gems while drinking in hopes of avoiding intoxication. The connection between amethysts and sobriety dates back at least to the time of the Greek poet Asclepiades of Samos, who was born around 320 B.C.E. and mentioned the phenomenon in a poem, according to the Gemmological Association of Great Britain. —Livi Gershon, from Smithsonian Magazine

Amethyst Vein in the Four Peaks Mine in Arizona

—from https://fourpeaksminingco.com/geology/. amethyst is found all over the world with large deposits in Brazil and Ontario, Canada.

from “Windflowers of Asclepiades of Samos”

(poem, written circa 320 B.C.E.)

XXX (Number 30)

CLEOPATRA’S RING (Also attributed to Antipater of Thessalonika)

Drunkenness am I— a gem worked by a subtle hand.

I am graven in amethyst, but the subject and the stone are badly matched.

Still, I am the precious property of Cleopatra,

and on the finger of a Queen even drunk, is sober.

—translated by Edward Storer in 1920, version by Larry Leigon

Amethyst Goblet

https://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/the-sobering-power-of-amethyst/

L’Amethyste by Alphonse Mucha, from the Precious Stones series, 1900

from the Brookstone Beer Bulletin, Sept.26, 2013