Many ancient Egyptians marked the first month of the New Year by singing, dancing and drinking red beer until they passed out, according to archaeologists who have unearthed new evidence of a ritual known as the Festival of Drunkenness.
During ongoing excavations at a temple precinct in Luxor that is dedicated to the goddess Mut, the archaeologists recently found a sandstone column drum dating to 1470-1460 B.C. with writing that mentions the festival.
The discovery suggests how some Egyptians over 3,000 years ago began their New Year, which for them started around the end of August to coincide with seasonal, desired flooding that drenched farmlands where they would grow crops, such as barley and wheat. The Festival of Drunkenness usually occurred 20 days after the first big flood.
The red beer angle has its source, as noted in the article, in the Destruction of Mankind myth:
This function of Sekhmet-Hathor as an agent of Re is made manifest in the Destruction of Mankind myth found on five royal New Kingdom tombs -- Tutankhamun, Seti I, and Ramesses II, III, and VI -- and is itself part of a larger work known as "The Book of the Cow of Heaven"
(Lichteim 1976:197; Watterston 1999:42). According to this story, Re plans the destruction of rebellious mankind and the council of gods advises him: "Let your Eye go and smite them for
you [i.e. Re], those schemers of Evil! (...) May it go down as Hathor!". The Eye finishes a day of slaying mankind and returns to Re who says "I shall have power [= sxm] over them [i.e. mankind] as king by diminishing them" and concluding with "Thus The Powerful One [ = sxmt ] (Sekhmet) came into being." The destructive aspect of the Eye is thus manifested as Sekhmet. Sekhmet, however, performed her task so well that Re was alarmed and decided to save mankind. Re had his priests prepare barley beer mixed with red ochre to give it the color of blood and on the morning that Hathor was to finish her destruction, Re poured the beer over the land. Hathor/Sekhmet, thinking the red beer was blood, drank it until she forgot about destroying mankind. "She drank and it pleased her heart. She returned drunk without having perceived mankind. The majesty of Re said to the goddess: 'Welcome in peace, O gracious one!'. Thus beautiful women came into being in the town Imu" (all quotes from Lichtheim 1976:198-199)
[Quoted from Cagle 2003]
Refs:
Cagle, A.J.
2003 A Spatial Analysis of Deposits in Kom el-Hisn, in A Delta-man in Yebu: Occasional Volume of the Egyptologists' Electronic Forum No. 1, edited by A. K. Eyma and C. J. Bennett, Universal Publishers.
Lichtheim, M.
1976 Ancient Egyptian Literature 2: The New Kingdom. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Watterston, B.
1999 Gods of Ancient Egypt. Bramley Books Limited, Godalming.