Grains, such as barley and wheat, legumes including lentils and chickpeas, beans, onions, garlic, leeks, melons, eggplants, turnips, lettuce, cucumbers, apples, grapes, plums, figs, pears, dates, pomegranates, apricots, pistachios and a variety of herbs and spices were all grown and eaten by Mesopotamians.
For the most part, Mesopotamians drank beer and lots of it. Wine was available, but more expensive. About the same time as the birth of agriculture, people began domesticating animals, beginning with goats. They also raised sheep, pigs, cattle, ducks and pigeons. They made cheeses and cultured dairy products from milk. Fish swam in the rivers and in the canals dug to irrigate crop fields and gardens.
Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets reveal over 50 varieties of fish that were a popular addition to the diet. GA and honey KBo 5. The latter was a special delicacy made from a wide spectrum of sweet and oily ingredients: oil, sheep fat, milk, butter, and honey. It has been compared to Turkish helva. A stew or thick soup flavored with oil was considered a particular delicacy and was often served to the king. Olive oil and honey were also poured on top of roasted mutton as a kind of sauce.
Singer thinks this was done to make it tender. It lists terms in the two ancient Mesopotamian languages for over different items of food and drink. Although Sumerian lexicographical lists and economic records indicate that a wide range of foodstuffs was consumed, not a single recipe existed from this early Mesopotamia period.
Lacking information, scholars had depicted the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia as consumers of nothing more interesting than sorry mushes.
Though his predecessors had thought they contained pharmaceutical formulas, the tablets in fact recorded the world's oldest extant recipes, revealing a varied Mesopotamian cuisine of striking richness, sophistication and artistry. Acquired by Yale in , baked in a kiln to preserve them in , and copied by hand onto paper in , the tablets had not received much attention until recently. Now they are among the collection's most talked-about pieces; just looking at them reported the New Haven Register imaginatively, "you almost can smell a 4,year old leg of lamb bubbling in a sauce thick with mysterious Mesopotamian herbs.
In fact, he confided in a letter to Jack Sasson, who translated his findings into English, "I would not wish such meals on any save my worst enemies. We might imagine, therefore, that even small households must have introduced some experimentation into their everyday eating, within the limits of their economic' capabilities. Known as the Yale culinary tablets, the three small Mesopotamian clay slabs, dating to about B.
Hallo, the curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection and a professor of Assyriology and Babylonian literature. Unlike hieroglyphic panels from ancient Egypt, the recipes are not much to look at. They are three brownish clay tablets, with the two largest being about the size of ordinary sheets of paper, filled with the puzzling geometric shapes that comprise cuneiform.
Scholars conjecture that the recipes were preserved in a library that was attached to a temple. Temples at that time were centers of ritual animal slaughter, which provided another context for dining. Although the tablets probably have been in Yale's Babylonian collection for decades, their contents have only become generally known in the last few years.
The collection, which has about 40, items, recently celebrated its 75th anniversary. Hallo said, ''suggesting that we have a kind of record made from the oral dictation of a master chef to an apprentice. Hallo said. The common Mesopotamian rarely, if ever, tasted the dishes described in the tablets, Mr. He cited the quality and quantity of the ingredients as well as the elaborate instructions for their preparation.
Much of the Babylonian population ''subsisted on the barest necessities,'' he said. Nor were the tablets intended for uses similar to today's common cookbook, according to scholars. Bottero wrote. Mary Inda Hussey's copies of the recipes were presented in a collection titled ''Early Mesopotamian Incantations and Rituals,'' though Mr. Hallo acknowledged that the recipes were not quite either. His French translations appeared with an introduction in English in as ''Mesopotamian Culinary Texts.
Laura Kelly wrote in silkroadgourmet. Kunasu in Akkadian. Emmer wheat Triticum dicoccum , also known as farro in Italian. Emmer a proto-wheat or awned-wheat that was one of the first domesticated crops. Emmer is one of the ancestors of spelt Triticum spelta. The use of it in Mesopotamian recipes probably refers to wheat flour, but possibly to wheat berries. Used roasted and added to the stews, soups and pilafs represented in the Yale Babylonian culinary tablets.
A fine flour called semida in the Talmud. In TCM Bottero called these beets. From a culinary point of view, the cracked rye or wheatberries make more sense than bran. Herodotus wrote in B. These are caught and dried in the sun, after which they are brayed in a mortar, and strained through a linen sieve. Some prefer to make cakes of this material, while others bake it into a kind of bread.
Kelly wrote in silkroadgourmet. Other things an ancient Mesopotamian could be found eating or drinking included: Meat from fish, cattle, horses, goats, sheep, and poultry. In the Book of Genesis, chapter 11, Babylon is featured in the story of The Tower of Babel and the Hebrews claimed the city was named for the confusion which ensued after God caused the people to begin speaking in different languages so they would not be able to complete their great tower to the heavens the Hebrew ….
Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Cover Letter. Ben Davis March 3, What did Mesopotamians eat for dinner? What did Mesopotamians eat for lunch?
0コメント