In the same vein as my previous post about Parthian drinking, I am pleased to report the publication of my essay “Some Material Correlates of Drinking in the Achaemenid Empire” in a volume edited by Shervin Farridnejad and Touraj Daryaee entitled Food for Gods, Food for Mortals: Culinary and Dining Practices in the Greater Iranian World (Čistā: Studies in the History, Cultures and Religions of the Iranian World 1, Irvine, CA: UCI Jordan Center for Persian Studies, 2022, 51-65).
This paper actually got its start as part of a job talk I gave at UC Irvine back in 2018. The job talk then became at conference paper (also at UCI), and then I wrote it up for a general audience while I was working at the Met, hence my extensive use of Met objects to illustrate it. I’m looking forward to reading the other contributions once my copy of the book arrives, especially since most of them were not part of the original conference (and they look very interesting). Incidentally, I believe the cover art depicts the making of doogh, which is also the subject of Touraj’s essay.