Ancient Treasures: The World’s First Cookbook
- Leah Miksi-Sahdo
- Mar 19
- 3 min read
It’s 1750 BCE. You are King Hammurabi of Babylon. It’s your son Samsu-iluna’s birthday on this fine Mesopotamian morning. Today marks your 43rd year of reign as the most powerful ruler of Babylon. It’s the month of Nisanu, and after New Year celebrations, you need to go all out for Samsu-iluna’s 40th birthday. This calls for a feast.
The history of the ancient Mesopotamians (Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadians, and Assyrians) is quite foggy to those who haven’t been exposed to it by their own interest. Western education focuses on ancient Rome and Greece. I bet you know Homer, Plato, and Aristotle but not Hammurabi, Sargon the Great, or Ashurbanipal.
While the ancient world feels distant from our artificial intelligence, flying cars, and microwave-filled world, our lives and those of our ancient ancestors are not that different. One everyday experience that connects us to them is our love of food! Granted, as Gen Z-ers, we don’t look through cookbooks to decide what to make for dinner—we browse TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest instead. Who’s to say the ancient Mesopotamians didn’t write down their recipes, though? And who’s to say looking back at their recipes can’t connect us to them?
In the 2nd millennium BCE, the ancient Babylonians documented meat soups, stews, porridges, and detailed instructions on their preparation. Many of these ingredients are still in use today! Though 4,000+ years separate us from the Old Babylonian period in which 3 of the 4 ancient cooking tablets were found, we can still find similarities in the fundamentals of cooking and taste.
Take this clay tablet from the Yale Babylonian Collection of culinary recipes, for example!
One of the recipes on this tablet describes a dish named “Unwinding,” which consisted of a vegetarian porridge dish made of vegetables, sourdough, and spices. The name of the dish suggests that the meal was a sort of comfort food of the time. As seen in the translation below, most of the ingredients are quite common even in our Western society today. Kurrat—known today as an Egyptian leek or shallot—may be unfamiliar, but other ingredients like cilantro, salt, leek, and garlic remain well-known today! Even similar cooking phrases that we still use today are engraved in this tablet, like “salt as desired!”
Alright, sure, this porridge recipe might seem boring. After all, how many of us actually eat porridge these days? So, how about we look at a classic ancient Mesopotamian sweet treat?
Arim Hawsho, a cookbook author and ancient Mesopotamian history extraordinaire shares this recreation of a Neo-Assyrian cake that included pomegranates. In the ancient world, pomegranates often symbolized abundance and prosperity. In very similar ways, cultures of today also associate fruits with good fortune. Some Persian and Levantine cultures still eat pomegranate today as a representation of life and renewal. In Latin American and Spanish cultures, twelve grapes are often eaten on New Year’s Eve to welcome the new year with good wishes. As we see, ancient Mesopotamian traditions are still present in different ways today, though we may not realize it. Another line of connection between us and them: We all have a sweet tooth! If you want to learn more about ancient Mesopotamian food history, follow Arim’s Instagram: @tableofgods
Surely this can bridge the ancient past to us modern foodies! Though centuries have passed and civilizations have risen and fallen, the love of food remains a thread connecting us to the ancient world. The Babylonians may not have had Michelin stars or viral food trends, but their culinary creativity laid the groundwork for recipes we still recognize today. As we explore these ancient tablets, we aren’t just uncovering history—we’re sharing a meal across time, proving that even 4,000 years later, good food is still at the heart of human connection.
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