In the News: Ancient Egyptian Festival of Drunkenness

MSNBC is reporting that at a briefing in Baltimore Saturday, Johns Hopkins University's Betsy Bryan, summarized her team's findings on an Egyptian religious festival of heavy drinking, sex, and "party music," which was held annually at the Temple of Mut in Luxor, in a precinct known as the "Porch of Drunkenness" ("Sex and Booze").

Here is the court at the Mut temple in Luxor, Egypt, where the Festival of Drunkenness likely took place. Sandstone columns found in this court refer to the festival:

The "porch" was erected in the New Kingdom period, during the reign of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut (c. 1479-1459 BCE). This dates the practice of drunken religious festivals much earlier in Egypt than previously attested.

The Egyptian wall painting below shows some heavy drunken partying in Egypt. The woman in the upper left has definitely had too much--you can see her vomiting! (click to enlarge).