Ex Oriente... Vinum! Archaeology, Art and Literature among the Wine-Growing Cultures of the Ancient Near East

In the Near East, the earliest attestations of Vitis vinifera subs. sylvestris, the Eurasian vine from which wine is produced,1 date back to the Neolithic period. One of the sites where the species has been identified is Hajji Firuz, in the foothills of the Zagros, the high mountain range that marks the eastern boundary of Mesopotamia proper. We cannot be sure as to the content of the large jars, wheel-thrown and fired, pictured in scenes showing the transport, storage and consumption of beverages in the art of the first half of the fourth millennium BC. Certainly in that period a dense network of political, economic and religious centers extended over all of Mesopotamia, from north to south. Thus, it cannot be ruled out, given that traces of tartaric acid were detected in jars found at Godin Tepe (3100-2900 BC), in the heart of the Zagros,3 and the intensification of cultural relations between upper and lower Mesopotamia after the rise of the first city-states, that one of the most valuable commodities circulating in the floodplain was a beverage obtained from grapes,4 somehow a progenitor of the vinum nostrum.