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Who Drank Wine in Ancient Troy? New Research Suggests sugar daddy financial support Just About Everyone
Chemical analyses revealed wine residue on both expensive goblets and common cups unearthed among the legendary city’s ruins
Eli Wizevich
|
History Correspondent
April 1, 2025
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A depas goblet excavated from the ruins of discussing expectations in sugar dating Troy by Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s
University of Tübingen
In the
first book
of the
Iliad
, the god Hephaestus passes a “double goblet” around at a banquet on Mount Olympus. “He poured the drink, going from right to left, for all the other gods, drawing off sweet nectar from the mixing bowl,” the epic poem states.
For those who enjoy libations from goblets or glasses, the rowdy evening that ensues should sound familiar. “Their laughter broke out irrepressibly,” Homer writes. “No one’s heart went unsatisfied.”
The
Iliad
is
, of course, a work of mythology. But that doesn’t mean all how to find a real sponsor the practices, people and places depicted in the poem are fully fictive.
The drinking vessel that find sugar babies Cebu Hephaestus passes around, for instance, is often identified as the
depas amphikypellon
, or depas goblet, a well-known relic among archaeologists that features a slender neck and two large handles.
Schliemann's haul from Troy, on view at the Neues Museum in Berlin
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
But whether the ancient residents of
Troy
truly sipped wine out of these goblets has long been consigned to the realm of speculation.
Now, for the first time, researchers how to choose a sugar daddy have identified chemical residues associated with wine in goblets unearthed at
Hisarlik
, the Turkish name for a site believed to be the ancient city immortalized in Homer’s epic, according to recommended sugar dating sites Philippines a new study published in the
American Journal of Archaeology
.
Heinrich Schliemann
, a German businessman and “amateur archaeologist with a penchant for embellishment,” discovered and haphazardly excavated the site in the 1870s, wrote
Smithsonian
magazine
’s Meilan Solly in 2022.
“Schliemann already conjectured that the depas goblet was passed around at celebrations—just as described in the
Iliad
,” says
Stephan Blum
, an archaeologist find sugar babies Davao at Germany’s University of Tübingen and a co-author of the study, in a
statement
. But, characteristic of Schliemann’s assertions, there was little hard evidence to back up his sweeping claims.
Archaeologists at Troy have unearthed more than 100 depas goblets dated to between 2500 and 2000 B.C.E. They tend to measure between 5 and 15 inches tall and can contain up to a liter of liquid, according to the statement.
A depas goblet in situ at Troy
University of Tübingen
For the study, the researchers drilled two-gram samples out of the inner walls of two vessel fragments excavated by Schliemann. Then, they heated the samples to more than 700 degrees Fahrenheit. Using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to isolate compounds in the mixture, the researchers identified the presence of
succinic
and
pyruvic
acids. Both are associated with alcoholic fermentation.
“The evidence of succinic and pyruvic acids was conclusive: They only occur when grape juice ferments,” says
Maxime Rageot
, a biomolecular archaeologist at Germany’s University of Bonn, in the statement. “So now we can state with confidence that wine was actually drunk from the depas goblets and not just grape juice.”
As
Popular Science
’s Andrew Paul points out, however, these goblets “weren’t everyday items.”
Schliemann discovered his “astonishing cache of goblets” among a cache of hundreds of sugar dating profile approval “objects made of gold, silver, copper and electrum, a mixture of precious metals,” wrote Joshua Hammer for
Smithsonian
in 2022. He called the hoard “
Priam’s Treasure
” after the mythical Trojan king
Priam
. Although the treasure was later
dated
to about 1,000 years before the Trojan War
took place
in the 12th or 13th century B.C.E., it offered evidence of the stratification of social classes in Troy, raising questions about who had access to wine in ancient times.
Did ancient Troy really exist? – Einav Zamir Dembin
Watch on
To determine if wine was only the drink of Troy’s elites—and its gods—the researchers conducted similar chemical tests with “ordinary cups that were found in the outer settlement of Troy and therefore outside the citadel,” Blum explains in the statement.
Common vessels, the team discovered, contained the same chemical signatures of wine. “It is clear that wine was an everyday drink for the common people, too,” Blum adds.
These results upend longstanding assumptions that wine was an elite beverage during the third millennium B.C.E. Like grapes on the vine, further research into the practices of wine drinking at other sites across the ancient world promises to be fruitful.
“Schliemann was right: The depas amphikypellon was certainly used for wine consumption,” writes Blum for the
Conversation
. “Whether this was tied to religious practices, rituals and public banqueting, or simply drinking wine as part of everyday life remains uncertain.”
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Eli Wizevich
is a history correspondent for
Smithsonian
. He studied history at the University of Chicago and previously wrote for the
El Paso Times
.
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