The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— Food and drink in Babylonia —
accordingly he drank milk from the udder as a baby and ate grass and drank water
as an adult (George 2003: 176–77, 544–45, 650–51). Thus, the animals’ grass and
water correspond to the civilised humans’ bread and beer. In each case civilisation
transforms raw materials, foods in their natural state, through complex processing,
the application of food technology. There is a profound difference between eating
and drinking solely to sustain life and doing so with the aim of enhanced pleasure,
in other words, between functional consumption and gastronomy.
The nature of food and drink varied according to social context. The Babylonian
diet was plant based and animal products were a relative luxury. Beer produced locally
from barley was more readily available than imported wine. In general, wealthier
people had a more varied diet and greater access to highly perishable foodstuffs such
as fresh meat.
Women were normally economically dependent on men. According to the Laws
of Hammurabi, a Babylonian woman with no food at home whose husband was a
prisoner of war was entitled to join the household of another man (Laws of Hammurabi
§§133a–136; Roth 1997: 106–07). Within domestic households women acted as
cooks and brewers. This is reflected by the household equipment listed in brides’
dowries in the Old Babylonian period. On tablets from Sippar, one dowry includes
a 20-litre copper kettle, two stone grinding slabs, six chairs, a table, a bronze pot, a
mortar and four small spoons (Dalley 1979: no. 15; Stol 1995: 486) and another
dowry two stone grinding slabs for barley flour, finely ground in one case, a mortar,
two containers of oil, five chairs, a table, two large spoons and five small spoons
(Ranke 1906: no. 101; Schorr 1913: 291–92; Bottéro 2004: 78). An Old Babylonian
bilingual wisdom text in Sumerian and Akkadian contrasts a disruptive female
neighbour with a domestic paragon who provides her household with everyday food
and drink. The damaged Akkadian description reads:
bīt sˇikaru ibasˇsˇû mazzaltūsˇa
bīt diqāru ibasˇsˇû kūtūsˇa
bīt aka[lu i]basˇsˇû nah ˘ atimmatum rabītum
The house with beer: her position is there.
The house with a pot: her jug is there.
The house with food: the chief female cook is there.
(Scheil 1927: 36; van Dijk 1953: 90–91;
Bottéro 2004: 77; translation author’s own)
Women’s dealings with food and drink were not, however, limited to the home.
In an Old Babylonian letter from an unknown site, a woman called H ˘ uzālatum who
lives in a village writes to a woman called Bēltani:
They brought me 100 litres of coarse barley flour (tappinnum), 50 litres of dates
(suluppū) and 1 1 ⁄2 litres of sesame oil (sˇamnum) with the earlier caravan; 10 litres
of sesame (sˇamasˇsˇammū) and 10 litres of dates this time. I have sent you 20 litres
of good quality flour (isqūqum), 35 litres of fine barley flour (zì.gu), 2 combs and
1 litre of sauce (sˇiqqum). In order to supply her provisions and as her food ration
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