give her 10 litres of barley (ûm) and 10 litres of coarse barley flour. There are no
‘spiny’ fishes (ziqtu ̄) here. Send me ‘spiny’ fishes, so I can put up sauce for
fermenting for you and they can bring it to you.
(Schroeder 1917 : no. 22 ; Frankena 1974 : no. 22 ;
Bottéro 2004 : 19 ; translation author’s own)Women were also active running the Babylonian equivalent of pubs and selling
beer, as attested by the Laws of Hammurabi §§ 108 – 11 (Roth 1997 : 101 – 02 ).
Some foods were far from being part of the staple diet. A man called Sˇamasˇ-na ̄s.ir
wrote of a taste sensation in an Old Babylonian letter from Larsa:
Tutu-ma ̄gir sent me seven usˇummu ̄-mice from Tur-Ugalla and I sent six on to
Sˇamasˇ-lamassasˇu, the zabardab-official. I kept just one to eat myself, and it tasted
excellent! Had I known how good they were, I’d not have sent a single one to
Sˇamasˇ-lamassasˇu!
(Dossin 1933 : no. 13 ; based on Englund 1995 : 47 )Food and drink would be more lavish on special occasions, including marriages
(Postgate 1992 : 101 – 02 ). Gastronomy at its finest would be practised in the kitchens
of royal palaces. Administrative records and letters from Zimri-Lim’s palace at Mari
give us a wealth of information about food and drink, especially that served at meals
attended by the king (Dalley 2002 : 78 – 96 ; Sasson 2004 ). In daily and monthly
records, the term ‘the king’s meal’ (naptan sˇarrim) is applied to many outlays of food,
probably issued for processing in the palace; such outlays are the subject of an estimated
1 , 300 entries dated to Zimri-Lim’s reign (Sasson 2004 : 182 – 83 , 196 ). Zimri-Lim’s
palace staff included a range of specialist food processors, both male and female, and
professions included the pantrymaid (abarakkatum), whose duties included producing
fruit conserves and pickles, and the female baker (e ̄pı ̄tum), who produced a wide variety
of breads (Sasson 2004 : 189 ). The king, accompanied by his retinue, hosted ceremonial
banquets for 26 to 562 people with elaborate presentation and etiquette in order to
secure or strengthen his guests’ loyalty (Sasson 2004 : 181 , 199 – 202 ).
Among the Babylonian tablets at Yale, there are three texts consisting of Akkadian
recipe collections (Van Dijk et al. 1985 : nos 25 – 27 ; Bottéro 1995 , 2004 : 25 – 35 ).
These tablets were written in southern Babylonia in the Old Babylonian period
between 1700 and 1600 BCand were not written as a set, although an ancient scholar
may have collected them together (Bottéro 1995 : 3 , 145 – 53 ). The three tablets contain
a total of 35 recipes: 33 with meat, one with no meat but with animal fat and blood
and one apparently free of animal products, although the text is badly damaged.
Heating in water and fat in a pot is the predominant cooking method and one passage
can occur in more than one recipe. The prevalence of meat indicates that these recipes
concern the elite rather than ordinary people and there are some indications of links
with religious ceremonies (Bottéro 1995 : 81 ). The fact that these recipes were collected
in writing places them in the realm of Old Babylonian scribal learning and the texts
can be compared to other technical manuals, such as those for making glass or
perfumes, and to medical texts (Milano 2004 : 244 – 49 ). The three recipe texts are
very unusual and we still do not understand all the terms for ingredients, culinary
processes and equipment.
— Frances Reynolds —