FOOD AND DRINK IN ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA

Just as water was vital to the creation of organic life on this planet, so was it vital to the birth of civilization. The first civilizations of the world began in river valleys where abundant supplies of water made it possible to grow sufficient crops to support large populations. The world’s first cities began in Mesopotamia, an event that could not have taken place had it not been for large-scale agriculture and the plentiful water upon which it depended.

Grain and Its By-Products

The staple crop of ancient farmers around the world was always grain: wheat, barley, rice, or corn. In Mesopotamia, the chief crop was barley. Rice and corn were unknown, and wheat flourished on a soil less saline than exists in most of Mesopotamia. Thus barley, and the bread baked from its flour, became the staff of life.

Mesopotamian bread was ordinarily coarse, flat, and unleavened, but a more expensive bread could be baked from finer flour. Pieces of just such a bread were, in fact, found in the tomb of Queen Puabi of Ur, stored there to provide her spirit with sustenance in the afterlife. Bread could also be enriched with animal and vegetable fat; milk, butter, and cheese; fruit and fruit juice; and sesame seeds.
Though bread was basic to the Mesopotamian diet, botanist Jonathan D. Sauer has suggested the making of it may not have been the original incentive for raising barley. Instead, he has argued, the real incentive was beer, first discovered when kernels of barley were found sprouting and fermenting in storage.

Whether or not Sauer is right, beer soon became the ancient Mesopotamian’s favorite drink. As a Sumerian proverb has it: “He who does not know beer, does not know what  good.” The Babylonians had some 70 varieties, and beer was enjoyed by both gods and humans who, as art shows, drank it from long straws to avoid the barley hulls that tended to float to the surface.

There was even a goddess of brewing, named Ninkasi, who was celebrated in a Sumerian hymn that dates to about 1800 B.C.E. Using the details of the brewing process recorded in this hymn, in 1989 the Anchor Brewing Company of San Francisco duplicated the recipe. According to one expert, the beer dubbed “Ninkasi” “had the smoothness and effervescence of champagne and a slight aroma of dates,” which had been added as an ancient sweetening agent (Katz and Maytag 1991: 33).

Fruits and Vegetables

The gardens of Mesopotamia, watered by irrigation canals, were lush with fruits and vegetables, whose ancient names survive in cuneiform dictionaries and commercial records. Among the fruits were apples, apricots, cherries, figs, melons, mulberries, pears, plums, pomegranates, and quinces. The most important fruit crop, especially in southern Mesopotamia, was the date. Rich in sugar and iron, dates were easily preserved. Like barley, the date-palm thrived on relatively saline soil and was one of the first plants farmers domesticated.

Should you wish to sample a fruitcake fit for a Sumerian king or queen, the recipe survives: one cup butter, one-third cup white cheese, three cups first-quality dates, and one-third cup raisins, all blended with fine flour. As for vegetables, the onion was king, along with its cousin, garlic. Other vegetables included lettuce, cabbage, and cucumbers; carrots and radishes; beets and turnips; and a variety of legumes, including beans, peas, and chickpeas, that could be dried for storage and later use. Together, the vegetables served as the basic ingredients for soup. Cooking oil, for its part, came from sesame seeds.

Curiously, two mainstays of the Mediterranean diet—olives and grapes (as well as wine)—were seldom found in Mesopotamian cuisine, largely because of the salinity of the river-valley soil and the absence of significant rainfall needed for their growth. Even honey was a luxury item since the Mesopotamians, unlike the Egyptians, did not keep bees but relied on hives found in the wild.

Spices and Herbs

Our contact with ancient Mesopotamia mostly takes place in the rarified atmosphere of museums, but to appreciate Mesopotamian daily life our imagination must breathe in the pungent aroma of the seasonings that once rose from ancient stoves and filled the air of once-populous cities. Coriander, cress, and cumin; fennel, fenugreek, and leek; marjoram, mint, and mustard; rosemary and rue; saffron and thyme once comprised the odoriferous litany of the Mesopotamian cook. Cumin, in fact, still echoes the Babylonian name, kamu¯nu, by which it was known 4,000 years ago.

Livestock and Fish

According to legend, prosperity came to Mesopotamia when the gods “made ewes give birth to lambs, and grain grow in furrows.” Sheep played an important role in the Mesopotamian economy. Shepherds tending their flocks are among the earliest images on seal-stones, and woolly rams are proudly pictured on the Royal Standard of Ur. The Sumerians, in fact, used 200 different words to describe sheep. Like goats and cows, ewes produced milk that was converted into butter and cheese, but sheep were also slaughtered for meat.

Beef was in short supply because meadowlands for grazing large herds were limited. The meat supply, however, was augmented by pork from pigs that foraged in marshlands. Game birds, deer, and gazelle were hunted as well. On farms, domesticated geese and ducks supplied eggs, while from the rivers and the sea, and from canals and private ponds, came some 50 types of fish, a staple of the Mesopotamian diet.

Generally, meats were either dried, smoked, or salted for safekeeping, or they were cooked by roasting, boiling, broiling, or barbecuing. Housed at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, are the Yale Culinary Tablets, a collection of 35 recipes that seem to have survived from a “cordon bleu” cooking school that operated in Babylonia around 1700 B.C.E. Among the more exotic recipes is one for partridge sprinkled with vinegar and rubbed with salt and crushed mint.

The Good Life

Despite its abundance, the real Mesopotamia was no Garden of Eden, for our Sumerian Adam and Eve had to earn their living by the sweat of their brow. However, if the gods smiled and floods did
not ravage the fields, life could indeed be good.

According to a legend, the hero Gilgamesh once went on a quest in search of immortality. In the course of his journey, he happened upon a tavern where a divine barmaid offered him some advice: Eat and drink your fill, Gilgamesh, And celebrate day and night. Make every day a festival; Day and night dance and play. Thus, even if the people of Mesopotamia were denied immortality, they could still eat, drink, and be merry until they died thanks to the beneficence of their land.

By Stephen Bertman (University of Windsor) in the book 'Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia', Facts on File, Inc., New York, 2003, p.291-294. Digitized, edited and adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.