On Isis and Osiris

king is looking on; the others use it, but sparingly. They have many periods of abstinence from wine, during which they spend their time philosophizing, learning, and teaching divine matters. 2 The kings also drank a measured amount from the sacred writings (as Hecataeus has recorded), being priests themselves. They began to drink wine from the time of Psammetichus; previously they did not drink wine, nor did they pour it as a libation, as if it were friendly to the gods, but as the blood of those who once fought against the gods, 3 from whose fallen bodies, when they were mixed with the earth, they believe vines were born; this is why drunkenness 4 makes men senseless and deranged,

...as they were full of the blood of their ancestors. In this regard, the king also drank a measured amount. The reason they did not drink before is that they themselves were priests. That some Egyptian priests were accustomed to abstain from all wine can be clearly confirmed from the testimony of Chaeremon the Stoic in Porphyry (On Abstinence, book 4, §6): "For some did not taste wine at all, others only the least." You now have the very distinction that Plutarch made between the Heliopolitan priests and the others of the same nation. It should be observed that not only among the Egyptians, but also among other nations, these libations without wine (nēphalia) were instituted for the Sun. For Phylarchus in Athenaeus (book 15) records that the Greeks offered honey to the sun, but did not bring wine to its altars, "saying that the God who holds and keeps together all things, and is always revolving around the world, should be a stranger to drunkenness."

2 Kings and priests: Hecataeus agrees with the Sicilian historian in this matter: "It was their custom (the kings) to use simple food, and a set amount of wine..."