Some people will do anything for a bottle of beer. At the Indianapolis Museum of Art, some were willing to pay more than $500.
The museum auctioned off two bottles of Tutankhamun Ale, a British-made beer purportedly made from a 3,250-year-old recipe of Egyptian beermakers. A third bottle was auctioned off Saturday night.Christopher Stack and Lori Efroymson, both of Indianapolis, each paid $525 for the bottles. Only 1,000 bottles were brewed, and three were donated to the museum.
"We didn't know what to anticipate because we're not commonly in the business of doing this," said Anne Robinson, a museum spokeswoman. "But we're very happy it worked out so well."
The beer's story reads like an Indiana Jones movie.
Archaeologists from Cambridge University's Egypt Exploration Society joined with Scottish and Newcastle Breweries six years ago, when the team uncovered a massive kitchen complex in the Sun Temple of Queen Nefertiti, a relation by marriage of King Tut.
The archaeologists examined grains and seeds left behind by ancient brewers, and the dregs of beer from excavated jars were analyzed to determine how the beer was made.
"Even the pure water of the desert wells was analyzed," said Jim Merrington, Scottish and Newcastle's project director. "We studied tomb paintings, deciphered (hieroglyphics) and excavated 10 or more brewing rooms in the quest for the liquid gold of Tutankhamun."
In reconstructing the recipe, Scottish and Newcastle brew-masters used emmer, an ancient wheat grown by the Egyptians, and coriander, an herb found in the Nile region.
The brewery said enough seeds were grown to create raw materials for only 1,000 bottles of the beer. The first bottle sold in England for about $7,200, and the rest sells for about $75 per bottle, Scottish and Newcastle officials said.
All are being sold at Harrods department store in London, except for the three being auctioned in Indianapolis.
That's a lot of work for a bottle of beer, posing the question: Is this the "Beer of Pharaohs" or a mere marketing ploy?
Perhaps a little bit of both, an industry expert says.
"To suppose that this beer was anything like what the Egyptians drank years ago is a stretch of the imagination," said Michael Lewis, a retired professor of brewing science at the University of California-Davis.
"It would be possible that they could find evidence of beer-making in certain locations, but unless they have some written records, they don't have what you call a recipe."
With or without a recipe, Lewis is suspicious of the claim that Scottish and Newcastle could come up with only 1,000 bottles.