“This is the nature of the ceremony on the way to Bubastis. They go by water, and numerous boats are crowded with persons of both sexes. During the voyage several women strike the cymbals, some men play the flute, the rest singing and clapping their hands. As they pass near a town they bring the boat close to the bank. Some of the women continue to sing and play the cymbals; others cry out as long as they can, and utter mocking jests against the people of the town, who begin to dance, while the former pull up their clothes before them in a scoffing manner. The same is repeated at every town they pass on the river. Arrived at Bubastis, they celebrate the festival of Bast, sacrificing a great number of victims, and on that occasion a greater consumption of wine takes place than during the whole of the year.” At this festival of Bast half the persons taking part in the celebrations must have become intoxicated. The Egyptians were always given to wine-drinking, and Athenæus goes so far as to say that they were a nation addicted to systematic intemperance. The same writer on the authority of Hellanicus, states that the vine was cultivated in the Nile Valley at a date earlier than that at which it was first grown by any other people; and it is to this circumstance that Dion attributes the Egyptian’s love of wine. Strabo and other writers speak of the wines of Egypt as being particularly good, and various kinds emanating from different localities are mentioned. The wines made from grapes were of the red and white varieties; but there were also fruit wines, made from pomegranates and other fruits. In the list of offerings inscribed on the walls of temples and tombs one sees a large number of varieties recorded--wines from the North, wines from the South, wines provincial, and wines foreign. Beer, made of barley, was also drunk very largely, and this beverage is heartily commended by the early writers. Indeed, the wine and beer-bibber was so common an offender against the dignity of the nation, that every moralist who arose had a word to say against him. Thus, for example, in the maxims of Ani one finds the moralist writing:-- “Do not put thyself in a beer-house. An evil thing are words reported as coming from thy mouth when thou dost not know that they have been said by thee. When thou fallest thy limbs are broken, and nobody givest thee a hand. Thy comrades in drink stand up, saying ‘Away with this drunken man.’”