“India appears on present evidence to have been the first culture to exploit widespread distillation of alcohol for human consumption.” Yet Allchin’s version isn’t the accepted history. Credit for the still goes instead to ancient Egypt, to an alchemist named Maria Hebraea, more commonly called Maria the Jewess. She was a scientist from the scholarly city of Alexandria sometime between the first and third centuries. And it’s . . . possible. Even though the history is sketchy, Alexandria was the kind of town where a Jewish woman researcher could have invented one of the most important pieces of
...more
