Feb 16, 2016 | HISTORY OF WINE |
Enjoy the second cartoon video in the History of Wine series. It explains wine’s role as a sacred drink, but also explains the dark side of wine as an evil drink, based on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Again, the story comes from Jose Peñin’s book History of Wine. This cartoon begins by explaining how the most ancient god (mother Earth) became the goddess of vines and wine to the ancient Babylonians and how many ancient cultures shared a common idea of a “Garden of the Gods” where wine was the main drink. Drinking wine is associated with higher beings and the vines represent eternity with its never-ended cycle of death and rebirth each year. Vines were a symbol of the cycle of life. Wine, as a higher drink with mystical properties, is represented in the first known text of history, the Poem of Gilgamesh (1800 BCE). This poem is a story about a Sumerian king that provoked the gods’ anger by treating the common people of his kingdom with cruelty. In the poem, the gods decided to kill the King and sent a savage giant called Enkidu to fight with him and to end the king’s life. To be prepared for combat, Enkidu is lionized for a while, making him drink up to 7 glasses of strong wine to achieve a higher status, to change him from simple savage to human. In the poem, wine was a way to a better and more elevated understanding of the world. But the things went bad for Enkidu, when in the vapors of wine, he and the King, not only never fought, but became close friends. So, the...
