Study: King Tut liked red wine best
A University of Barcelona research team has discovered Egypt's King Tutankhamun was partial to wine, preferring red over white.
The mystery of exactly what was kept inside jars found in the tomb of the Egyptian king (1336-1327 BC) was solved by the Spanish scientists who analyzed scrapings from eight jars found in Tutankhamun's tomb.
They presented their findings Wednesday at the British Museum in London, The Times of London reported.
"Wine jars were placed in tombs as funerary meals," Maria Rosa Guasch-Jane, a master in Egyptology at the university, told The Independent.
"The ... wine jars were labeled with product, year, source and even the name of the vine grower, but they did not mention the color of the wines they contained," she said.
The researchers developed a technique involving liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry to determine the color of the wine that had been stored in the jars, The Independent reported.
Tutankhamun became king at the age of about 8 and is believed to have been about 17 when he died.
The earliest knowledge of wine cultivation comes from Ancient Egypt, where the process was represented on tomb walls dating to 2500 BC, the Times said.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International