THERE’S INTELLECTUAL SATISFACTION in communing with past civilizations. Maybe it’s the grandeur of Rome’s Pantheon or the serenity of Kamakura’s Daibutsu. Or the culinary comfort of “What the Mesopotamians Had for Dinner,” as described by Veronique Greenwood in BBC, August 14, 2024. Here in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow are tidbits arising from these thoughts.
Cuneiform Communication. Greenwood recounts, “No-one knows exactly where they came from; for a long time, no-one really understood what they said. The little slabs of clay covered with dense, wedge-shaped cuneiform writing were thought by Yale University scholars to involve medicines. Unearthed in an archaeological dig in the Middle East, they have probably been in the Yale Babylonian Collection since 1911. It wasn’t until the early 1980s, however, that French scholar Jean Bottéro finally figured out what the tablets were saying. In their understated way, for nearly 4,000 years, they’ve been talking about dinner.”
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An ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform. Image courtesy of Peabody Museum via BBC.
Translated from the Clay. Greenwood continues, “And indeed, in many cuneiform texts, when ancient scribes put stylus to clay and incised stories and accounts that happen to mention food, they use words that are themselves sometimes mysterious to modern scholars. Ingredients pop up whose identity is still unknown, said Gojko Barjamovic, an Assyriologist at Harvard University. Asum is myrtle, salu is cress seeds, but what is hurrium? Reading the list of unknown spices alone, from a paper by Barjamovic, Lassen, and their collaborators, conjures visions of a lost garden, nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers: Kurullu, kuruš, nīnu. Silaru, zanzar, zibibianu.”
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The Fertile Crescent: the Nile River and the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Image from Wikipedia via “Moving the Water for Fun and Profit.”
An Etymological Tidbit. I noted in that article, “The Tigris and Euphrates River Valley, much of it in what is now Iraq, was home to the ancient Mesopotamia culture originating around 3500 B.C. Dissecting its name, you get ‘between waters,’ the same two etymological roots as in mezzo soprano and hippopotamus.”
Recipes in Clay. Greenwood writes, “The four tablets – the larger ones the size of a large bar of soap, the smallest, more than a thousand years younger, a mere round handful of clay—are inscribed with the ingredients not of pharmaceuticals but of dishes. Dated to at least 1730 BC, the three larger tablets mostly contain descriptions of stews; the smallest, from a later period, speaks of a broth.”
Hmm… Many of my favorite recipes are kinda stews: “A Serendipitous Appearance in the Fridge,” “Freezer Clean-Out Gumbo,” and “Laissez les Bons Plats Rouler!”
Why not give Mesopotamian stew a try?
A Tu’hu Coming Up. Why not indeed. Greenwood describes, “Here is how one of the stews is made: for the lamb stew known as tu’hu, first you get water. Then you sear leg meat in fat. In go salt, beer, onion, rocket, coriander, Persian shallot, cumin, beets, water. Crushed leek and garlic and more coriander, for a fiery taste. Then add kurrat, an Egyptian leek.”
Hold on; I’ll check in my pantry. And tomorrow in Part 2 I’ll share culinary results. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024
