CHAPTER ELEVEN
FOOD AND DRINK
IN BABYLONIA
Frances Reynolds
sˇu ̄ kil akalu sˇiqi kurunnu
erisˇti qı ̄sˇi epir u kubbit
ana annîmma ilsˇu h
̆
adı ̄sˇ
t.a ̄ bi eli sˇamasˇ irâbsˇu dumquGive food to eat, give beer to drink,
Provide what is asked for, supply food, and honour your guests!
For this a man’s god is happy with him;
It is pleasing to Shamash [the Sun God] – he will reward him.
Counsels of Wisdom, 61 – 64 (Lambert 1960 : 102 ;
Foster 2005 : 413 ; translation author’s own)TYPES OF EVIDENCEI
nvestigating life in Babylonia involves assessing two main types of evidence: the
evidence of archaeology, including representations in ancient art, and the evidence
of texts, predominantly written in cuneiform script in the Akkadian language. In the
case of food and drink modern scholars rely mainly on Akkadian texts, since the
evidence from the archaeological record is more limited. Little work has been done
in the following areas of Babylonian archaeology: the analysis of human skeletal
remains, a potential source of information about diet; the study of animal remains;
and the study of plant remains, many of which do not survive (Nesbitt 2003 : 26 – 30 ).
Archaeology is more revealing about food technology, the equipment and facilities
used for storing, preparing and eating food, but the picture is far from complete.
The extensive and varied textual record includes administrative texts, letters, lexical
texts, literature and even some recipes. However, it too gives only a partial picture.
Texts do not reflect society as a whole, since cuneiform literacy was restricted to
highly trained professional scribes, and we cannot identify many Akkadian words for
foodstuffs, including names of plants and fish, or how many of them were used (Powell
2003 : 14 – 15 ). On balance, however, most of our knowledge about Babylonian food
and drink derives from Akkadian texts rather than archaeological sources.