The “Liquid Gold” of the Sumerians
A Look at the History of Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia
“He who does not know beer, does not know what is good” — Sumerian Proverb
It is a warm summer evening. The ground is still hot but the air is cooling pleasantly. The moon glows in the dark blue sky. Insects hum, cicadas buzz, and a jackal barks somewhere in the countryside. The streets are mostly quiet, with oil lamps freshly lit at the corners. Your back and legs ache from a hard day’s work. You sit at a low table in the courtyard of the local brewer’s house- crowded with many people and voices. At this time- one of the brewer’s daughters places a frothing clay jug in front of you with a smile as she moves from table to table. You take a large gulp of the beer. Brewed early in the day and stored in a dark cellar, it’s deliciously cool. You take another swig of beer.
This is not your typical Saturday evening at your favorite local pub! Well, it could have been, but it isn’t. It is how a Sumerian farmer chose to spend his afternoon, almost 5.000 years ago! Considering the massive time gap that separates us it is crazy to think how similar our lives are when compared with those of our ancestors, who lived in an entirely different world. And yet here we are enjoying a “cold one” with our friends, just like they did. Things haven’t changed that much after all…
Beer is the most widely consumed alcoholic beverage in the world and the third most widely consumed beverage behind water and tea (Kelly, 2019)! It is also the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world, with a mysterious history that goes back in the mists of time! When you take a pint with your friend, you probably don’t realize that you are drinking an ancient elixir which was once considered the “Gift of the Gods”. Let’s see how one of humanity’s first civilizations — the Sumerians — enjoyed this “Liquid Gold” and gave us the oldest recipe for brewing what appears to be the man’s best friend after the dog.
A Neolithic Discovery
Historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists have different opinions about both the origins of beer and the identity of its creators. The first beer in the world was brewed by the ancient Chinese around the year 7000 BCE (Joshua, 2011). In the west, it was initially believed that the process now recognized as beer brewing began much later in Mesopotamia at the Godin Tepe settlement now in modern-day Iran between 3500–3100 BCE. Some newer evidence has been interpreted, however, which sets the date of beer brewing at Godin Tepe as early as 10,000 BCE when agriculture first developed in the region (Joshua, 2011)!
Current research indicates the genesis of beer occurred as an accidental discovery by Natufian peoples of the Levant — the ancestors of the Sumerians — around 10,000 BCE. Their discovery occurred after wild barley, which they collected in jars, was incidentally moistened coming into contact with wild yeast, thus allowing the process of fermentation to occur (Kelly, 2019). This accidental discovery of beer seems to have been occurred repeatedly in different parts of the world where civilization first emerged independently.
Beer is not only as old as bread, but there is a hypothesis stating that perhaps it even predeceased it! In 1953 a debate emerged if, in fact, beer rather than bread was the first processed item to be made from domesticated grain. After some research, a consensus was made claiming that the cultivation of early cereal crops in the near East would have been better suited to produce beer as opposed to bread (Kelly, 2019).
The desire for beer was likely an important factor in the establishment of settled agriculture and an impetus for the Neolithic revolution in the Near and Middle East. It has been argued, that it was the discovery of the intoxicating
effect of the alcohol contained in beer rather than the use of grain for other foodstuffs that caused the transition from hunting and gathering to living in
stable settlements, domesticating animals, and cultivating the soil (Damerow, 2012).
In simple worlds, our ancestors got drunk a few times around a fire and then came to the conclusion that this was way more funnier than hunting deer and drinking water. So, you should take a moment and thank your drunken forefathers for they are the reason that you are reading this article, sitting on your couch.
Beer Production in Ancient Sumer
From the Natufians, the knowledge of brewing passed onto the Sumerians, who came to rule the land which is now called Mesopotamia. There, the famous drink became an instant success, conquering city after city! Proto-cuneiform texts dating from 3200 to 3000 BC document that at the time when writing was invented beer was no longer simply an agricultural product of the rural settlements, but rather belonged to the products subjected to the centralized economy of Sumerian states (Damerow, 2012). Clay tablets, like the one in the picture, have been found throughout Mesopotamia stating the official alcohol ratio and the amount of grain used to produce these state-owned beers. Due to its organized production beer was one of the surplus products of the new economy of early cities and there is evidence that around 3,500 BCE, in the Sumerian city of Uruk, its residents were bartering with beer, trading the beverage for more scarce and precious resources, such as precious stones, timber, and metal (Kelly, 2019).
In other words, thanks to the Sumerians beer passed from being a way of your local farmer uncle to embarrass himself in front of a clan gathering, to being produced en masse with every person living in Mesopotamia, having access to it.
In 2006, a paper was published presenting the results of an interdisciplinary study of archaeological finds at Tall Bazi. These finds indicated the brewing of beer in a considerable number of households (Damerow, 2012). It turned out that many of the excavated houses were equipped with a large, barrel-shaped vessel half-buried in the floor, with a capacity of up to 200 liters. Furthermore, some smaller vessels, jars, and cups could be identified as having also been used to store or consume beer. These vessels were unearthed together with devices used in grain milling, suggesting that beer was regularly produced within the individual households of the Tall Bazi settlement (Damerow, 2012).
So, not only the Sumerians transform the art of brewing into one of the world’s first mass-produced products, but they were also the first craft beer brewers!
How to Make Sumerian Beer
It comes to a great surprise that besides its important role in Sumerian society, there is only one beer recipe known from this time (Damerow, 2012)! This is the so-called “Hymn to Ninkasi”. This poetical work is a kind of mythical poem or song dedicated to Ninkasi, the goddess of brewing, a minor goddess in the Sumerian pantheon. The hymn is known from three copies which were written in the Old Babylonian period about 1800 BC. It contains, in mythological glorification, a description of the brewing process. This description is the most important source on which our current knowledge of this process is based (Damerow, 2012).
In Sumerian society, beer was often one of the most nutritionally dense items an individual could consume (Kelly, 2019). It varied significantly from the commercially available beers consumed throughout the world today. It was not brewed with hops as is common today, instead of including the fermentation of “bappir,” or a loaf of hard, twice-baked bread and the addition of crushed grains, not involved in the fermentation process. Sumerian beer contained a diverse array of additives for flavoring, including fenugreek, coriander, dates, safflower, lupine, mandrake, grape pips, and orange skins. As a result, it was thick with a viscous consistency much like that of porridge or gruel and possibly was quite sweet. The alcohol content of this beer was somewhat low, ranging from 2-to-5 percent alcohol by volume (Kelly, 2019). Because of its density beer was considered more of a foodstuff and individuals consumed approximately 1 liter per day.
As a result of its dense consistency and low alcohol content, beer was often featured centrally as part of meals rather than as an accompaniment, where it was served at room-temperature (Kelly, 2019). It was consumed with the help of large reed straws, which were invented by the Sumerians specifically for the purpose of drinking beer and, no matter how carefully filtered that beer was, it does seem that the straw was used to keep a drinker from the unpleasant experience of consuming sediment in the beer (Joshua, 2011). If you ever wished to drink beer in “Sumerian style”, then you and your friends should find some large straws, which you will all put into a large common jar filled with your favorite beverage.
Epilogue: What Beer Meant for the Sumerians
For the Natufians (and later the Sumerians), the consumption of alcohol had social benefits, as it had quick-acting elevating effects on emotions and contained perception-altering qualities. As a result, it was important in both secular and sacred events, such as during marriage ceremonies and social gatherings (Kelly, 2019). Simply put, besides the invention of writing, the establishments of the first cities, and giving us one of the oldest civilizations, the Sumerians also invented the antidote to social awkwardness. You just sit with a bunch of people, take a sip or two and let the drink do its tricks.
Sumerians were also the first people to link beer with another positive aspect of human life, besides getting drunk with your friends: Having sex! Beer was often consumed during intimate occasions and often went hand in hand with sexual intercourse, as evidenced by erotic scenes which often contain beer or references to the beverage (Kelly, 2019). Furthermore, references to beer are common in Sumerian erotic poetry. One such poem creates the comparison of the sweetness of one’s beloved to “the sweetness of honey and dates” and the “sweetness of butter and beer.” (Kelly, 2019). There you have it, folks, if you ever wondered how to make a Sumerian girl fall for you, a compliment like “honey you are as sweet as beer” will do the trick!
Beer also played a significant role in women’s lives, as it provided economic opportunity in a heavily patriarchal culture. The priestesses of Ninkasi were the first brewers and this is hardly surprising since women, generally, had brewed beer in the home until commercial production of the beverage began and men started taking over (Joshua, 2011). Sumerians saw brewing as synonymous with food preparation and therefore a female role/ chore. As a result, women regularly brewed beer in preparation for their meals and were responsible for providing a household with bread and beer (Kelly, 2019). The brewing of beer and the baking of bread provided an egalitarian economic venue for Sumerian women who were excluded from most professions (kelly, 2019).
There is something magical when you find out that people of the past had so much in common with us. When you study History it is easy to “dehumanize” these societies, thinking that they were inferior to ours, because they simply came before and did not possess our advanced technology. It is easy to view them as a whole and not as human individuals. But, once we stop this practise, we find out a wonderful and colorful race of people. People who loved to drink together, who enjoyed going with their friends to “ancient pubs”. Men and women laughing outloud as they were sitting together, drinking beer and telling sexual jokes and erotic compliments while taking large sips of their favorite alcoholic beverage.
Bibliography
Kelly, J., (2019), An Ancient Elixir: Beer in Sumer, International Social Science Review: Vol. 95 : Iss. 3 , Article 1. Available at: https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol95/iss3/1
Damerow, P., (2012), Sumerian Beer: The Origins of
Brewing Technology in Ancient Mesopotamia, Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
Joshua, J., M., (2011), The Hymn to Ninkasi, Goddess of Beer, available at https://www.worldhistory.org/article/222/the-hymn-to-ninkasi-goddess-of-beer/,
Joshua, J., M., (2011), Beer in the Ancient World, available at https://www.worldhistory.org/article/223/beer-in-the-ancient-world/,
