Gojko Barjamovic, a lecturer at Yale University, along with a team from Harvard, deciphered and even attempted to recreate some of the dishes detailed on Babylonian clay tablets dating back nearly 4,000 years.
For decades, these tablets puzzled archaeologists. Written in cuneiform script, they were long thought to contain medicinal formulas or rituals. However, thanks to the efforts of Barjamovic and his colleagues, it is now understood that these ancient texts are some of the oldest known written recipes. "Cooking is one of those silent technologies that was traditionally passed on informally, especially among women. That is why archaeologists long doubted the possibility of such written artifacts existing," explained Barjamovic, according to LaRepublica.pe.
The discovery of these tablets revealed that cooking was an art passed down orally for much of history, with the Mesopotamian cookbook representing a rare instance of written documentation, according to LaRepublica.pe. Many of the dishes feature ingredients still common in modern Iraqi cuisine, such as cilantro and garlic, demonstrating continuity in the Mesopotamian gastronomic tradition.
However, the recipes differ from modern cookbooks. They often lack precise measurements and detailed instructions, presenting challenges for researchers trying to reconstruct the dishes. "The ingredients in the tablets are listed without exact quantities and with terms that, in many cases, are untranslatable today, complicating the reconstruction of the earliest recipes in history," noted scholars involved in the study.
Among the recipes deciphered are stews, some vegetarian and others containing meats like lamb. One recipe describes a lamb stew seasoned with coriander, leek, and garlic. Another intriguing dish is a pie filled with the meat of songbirds. These ancient recipes reflect a society with a sophisticated palate, far removed from the rudimentary fare often imagined when thinking of ancient cuisines.
Yale University received four Babylonian tablets dated to 1730 BCE, of which only three now survive, kept in the Babylonian Collection.
Determining whether an ancient text contains food preparation instructions can be a difficult task. The brevity and imprecision of the culinary instructions complicate confirmation of their true purpose. Furthermore, ancient medical mixtures often contained edible ingredients, making it challenging to distinguish between recipes for food and those for medicinal purposes.
Jean Bottero, a French archaeologist in the 1980s, confirmed that the Babylonian tablets indeed contain cooking instructions, specifically food recipes. His work laid the foundation for current research, although he remarked that the food described in the tablets was inedible, perhaps due to the lack of precise measurements and the use of untranslatable terms.
"Far from being mere soulless recipes, these culinary instructions engraved in stone tell a millennial story of complex, greedy, and creative societies that were already innovating in the kitchen 4,000 years ago," noted scholars studying the tablets.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.