Did the Ancient Egyptians drink coffee?

Illustration of Coffea arabica plant
and seeds; possibly this plant was 
the first of several coffee plants 
cultivated.  (Public domain image
found on Wikipedia).

The question in the title was asked by a friend of mine in an on-line communication.  The answer led me to some interesting information.

The answer to the question in the title, by the way, is "no."  The ancient Egyptians didn't drink coffee.  Tomb paintings and other information confirm that the ancient Egyptians drank wine and, more commonly beer.  The latter was consumed with a straw, to minimize drinking the unfiltered sediment that settled to the bottom.  

But confirming that answer made me curious about the original home of the coffee plant.  To my surprise, the coffee plant originated in the Old World, specifically in southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa (the easternmost peninsula on the African continent).  So it would not be impossible for the Egyptians to have discovered its use.  Why didn't they?

Maybe the ancient Egyptians missed out on discovering coffee because a lot of processing is needed to turn coffee beans into the black beverage we crave today.  The same is true of chocolate.  However, the cacao pod from which chocolate ultimately comes, even in its raw state, yields pulp that the area monkeys relish.  Observing such monkeys might have led humans to try to figure out how to make the plant useful to themselves.  Coffee does not have any obvious uses in its raw state.  

Despite stories of coffee use dating to the 9th century, the earliest solid evidence pinpoints coffee use to 15th century Yemen, where its stimulant properties made it useful to scholars.  However, the Yemeni scholars purportedly imported the stuff from Ethiopia, where the plant's secrets likely were discovered and mastered.  Wikipedia has a surprisingly long and well-footnoted account of the history of coffee and its use, which can be read here.  

If I find more information about the origins of coffee, I will write about them in another post.  

EDIT:  (10/5/2021)  The History Guy recently published a YouTube video on the history of coffee that contains much of the types of material in the Wikipedia article.  Find it here.  Note:  Ads included, unless you are a YouTube Premium subscriber.