Another record of beer sale. Photo Babelstone.The Sumerians already had the technology of brewing beer when they arrived in Mesopotamia from unknown parts. Dedicated beer drinkers though they were, the Sumerians did not invent the process of fermenting grain and their words related to this process come from an unknown culture. The brew was drunk communally from a large vessel with straws. Mesopotamians consumed beer with food and on its own, and also used beer in cooking and in medicine. Some households made their own beer, but breweries also delivered to houses. Brewing was originally a woman’s occupation, although over time there was encroachment by men into this area. Women owned and managed the taverns.In some ways the taverns of Mesopotamia were like those of today only more so. They were places for gossip and wasting time. Sexual activity often accompanied the drinking, including prostitution and homosexual activity, which is graphically portrayed in pictures. The euphoric effects of alcohol were as much a purpose of drinking in the tavern as the camaraderie, although scholars do not believe that habitual drunkenness was a feature of Mesopotamian life, partly because the drink was not very potent. Rulers looked on the taverns with distaste. It was not the prostitution, homosexuality, or inebriation they objected to – Mesopotamians held no judgment about these things – but the potential public houses presented for political intrigue. There also seems to have been a general disapproval of people habitually indulging in idle gatherings during the afternoons. Priestesses were forbidden to enter the taverns, perhaps because sexual relations with men were not allowed in some priestess roles.The subject of drinking often arises in myth. In his epic search for eternal life, Gilgamesh encounters a female tavern owner who urges him to abandon his quest.
until the end, enjoy your life,spend it in happiness, not despair.Savor your food, make each of your daysa delight, bathe and anoint yourself,wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean,let music and dancing fill your house,love the child who holds you by the hand,and give your wife pleasure in your embrace.That is the best way for a man to live.
The scene sets out starkly the choice humans face of pursuing grand ambitions which may bring frustration and unfulfillment versus the abandonment of dreams for temporal pleasures.SourcesBlack, Jeremy and Anthony Green. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1992.Bottero, Jean.The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.Mitchell, Stephen.Gilgamesh: A new English version. New York: Free Press, 2004.Beer drinking scene from a cylindrical seal, circa 2600 B.C.E.
Barley field. Photo Daniel Schwen.I don’t know if other priestesses begin to notice a pattern in the goddesses they are attracted to in the various pantheons. With a few exceptions, I seem to gravitate toward the young mother goddesses rather than the crone goddesses, although I respect and acknowledge the crone’s power. A friend of mine seems to like goddesses that are associated with pigs, and she was surprised when I pointed that out. Recently I’ve become aware of another idiosyncrasy in my goddess studies: my unconscious attraction to goddesses who like beer.The Mesopotamians loved their beer. They even had a beer goddess, Ninkasi, and all the gods were enthusiastic beer drinkers. (Ninkasi is one of the eight children of Ninhursaga and Enki mentioned in my book Invoking Animal Magic.) The god Enki, known for his often generous and sometimes erratic behavior, gives the gifts of civilization to Inanna while in an expansive drunken mood. (He regrets this when he sobers up.)Even the Egyptians, who also loved their beer, used wine as well as beer in religious and funerary rites, and pharaohs devoted time and attention to grape cultivation and wine making. In northern Mesopotamia rich men also cultivated grapes, and wine was imported, but nowhere did the fermented grape surpass the fermented grain (though it seems Ninkasi presided over both). Descriptors of beer quality, type, and manufacture rival those in other Mediterranean cultures for wine. The Greeks deplored the Mesopotamian’s fidelity to beer as an unfortunate flaw in an otherwise civilized culture.Beer was made from fermented grains, usually barley. According to Jean Bottero:
Although necessarily different from our beer, it was still essentially made from a base of various grains, first germinated and malted in damp conditions and then, once malting was completed, heated in water into which various aromatic products had been added. (Hops were unknown in that area, but dodder [probably a red vegetable dye–HMR] was used, and many other flavoring agents as well.) Then the mash was left to ferment.
The resulting brew was not very high in alcohol content, and was often further diluted with water, but it nonetheless produced in expansive feeling. Here is an excerpt from a drinking song, translated by Jeremy Black:Receipt written for beer delivery by scribe Ur-Amma. Photo Tom L. Lee.
In the troughs made with bur grass, there is sweet beer. I will have the cupbearers, the boys and the brewers stand by. As I spin around the lake of beer, while feeling wonderful, feeling wonderful, while drinking beer, in a blissful mood, while drinking alcohol and feeling exhilarated, with joy in the heart and a contented liver — my heart is a heart filled with joy! I clothe my contented liver in a garment fit for a queen! The heart of Inana is happy once again; the heart of Inana is happy once again!
We are not done drinking in Mesopotamia. Next week more libations will be poured.SourcesBlack, J.A., Cunningham, G., Ebeling, J., Flückiger-Hawker, E., Robson, E., Taylor, J., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/), Oxford 1998–2006.Bottero, Jean. The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.Hornsey, Ian Spencer. A History of Beer and Brewing. Cambridge, UK: Royal Chemistry Society, 2003.
What was cooking and eating like in Mesopotamia? Last week’s post gave some idea of the range of ingredients used by Mesopotamian chefs. It is not surprising that food in Mesopotamia was heavily spiced, given the evidence that even hunter-gatherers seasoned their food. What is interesting is the variety and sophistication of the cooking techniques.Meat was typically braised over a large open fire to seal in the juices, then deboned, trimmed of gristle, and cut into smaller pieces. It was then transferred to a large clay pot to simmer in broth and vegetables over a stove, somewhat like we would do with a crockpot. Regulated high heat cooking was done in a smaller metal pan. There are many descriptions for grain dishes cooked in broth and animal fat. Unleavened bread would be flattened and cooked quickly on hot clay surfaces or in ceramic cooking molds. Bread was leavened with beer or some other fermented mixture and baked in a dome oven. Over 200 varieties of bread are mentioned, many of which resemble cakes or pastries. Various shells and baskets made of bread were used as serving containers for meat. Salt was sometimes used for curing meat or fish. Fish might also be cut in thin pieces and dried. Fruits and vegetables might be dried in the sun or in slow ovens devised for this purpose. Since there was a ready supply of heat and sunshine, I wonder if cooks might have had a source of solar cooking, but this is not mentioned in any of my books. While trees were sparse in most of the region, particularly in the south, there was enough scrub vegetation for charcoal, which was produced for cooking.Fermented dairy products, surprisingly, were unknown, but milk had to be quickly processed in that hot climate. Milk products were usually consumed as cream, buttermilk, or cheese. Butter was clarified.Culinary records that survive emphasize cleanliness of hands and utensils and the need to wash certain ingredients thoroughly. None of the recommendations on hygienic food preparation are as complex as Jewish dietary laws, but there are indications that cleanliness was a concern. Pork was consumed (as was shellfish), but pigs are described as unclean in their habits, needing special care in raising. There are no explicit food taboos, although it seems that eating dogs or horses would not have occurred to anyone. (Europeans ate both.) There were strictures against eating certain foods on certain days or times of the year, and it is unclear whether this was for religious or other reasons.The table of the gods will be discussed in another section, but it is worth noting here that foods for the divine epicure were prepared simply. Meat was roasted; bread was basic. It seems that conservatism was the basis for this, the texts mentioning that foods for the gods are prepared according to the old ways. This is interesting to me because Pagans today offer old-fashioned libations to the Goddess: wine, mead, beer, water or fruit juice. It would not occur to me to offer her a cola, and I doubt anyone has ever given her a highball.Speaking of libations, next week’s post will talk about drinking in Mesopotamia.Source: The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia, by Jean Bottero (translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan), University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Photo Luigi ChiesaSurprisingly little is discussed about the enjoyment of food in ancient Mesopotamia, even though a rather extensive culinary record is extant. Once the Akkadians and Sumerians of this region began practicing irrigation, the rich soils and hot climate yielded a rich abundance of food that persisted for three millennia. At one time it was believed that agriculture began in this region. We now know this is not true, but the diversity and surfeit of human produced food, as well as the complexity of food preparation, is truly remarkable.Over the next few weeks I will be writing about food, feasting, and drink in Mesopotamia. Most of the information presented here comes from Jean Bottero’s 2004 book The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia. As Bottero notes, all societies develop “routines and rituals, perhaps even myths, to regulate the use of food, indeed, to confer a value upon food that goes beyond the mere consumption of it…”Here is the menu for a feast ordered by Assyrian King Assurnasirpa II (northern Mesopotamia circa 850 B.C.E.) to celebrate the conclusion of a large construction project. This feast was prepared for 69,570 people and included the king’s staff, the population of the city, guests invited from outside the city, plus all the workers who had participated in the project–and of course, all the gods.
1,000 oxen1,000 calves and young lambs14,000 sheep and 200 oxen “from the flocks belonging to Ishtar, my mistress”1,000 fattened sheep1,000 lambs500 deer500 gazelles1,000 large birds1,000 geese and other fowl2,000 suki and qaribe birds (don’t know what those are)10,000 pigeons10,000 doves10,000 small birds10,000 fish10,000 locusts10,000 eggs10,000 measures of beer10,000 skins of winePhoto Bohringer Friedrich.quantities of barley, wheat, sesame, carob, garlic, onions, lentils, turnips, milk, pomegranates, grapes, pistachios, almonds, figs, dates, roses, cumin, aniseed, watercress, and various other foods and spices which cannot be translated.
Sounds like quite a party! Next week I will discuss how all of this food might have been prepared.
The whole of the universe should be represented by the number zero rather than the number one. When I ran across this contention on the blog of a pagan queer theorist (a queerist?) I decided to ignore this incredible statement, once my head stopped exploding, because it is, er – not credible. But since this idea has actually been seriously entertained by a few other people, I’m going to address it. I will not link to the post, even though the author proudly took credit, because I’m embarrassed for zhir.Photo by Veda Napha Naramit.Photo by Adriano.In mathematics we use words and symbols to represent things that exist in the real world or to represent concepts that do not actually exist but help us to understand reality nonetheless. There is one cat in the picture to the left and two cats in the picture to the right. The numbers one and two have a physical, concrete basis in the real world. In the next picture, there are six images of cats, but taken as a whole this is one picture (or, as it is known in mathematics, one set). But what if there are no cats? We can designate a picture without cats in it as “no cats” or “zero cats,” with zero referring to cats that do not exist. Zero is is defined as having no existence. It is nothing, only a useful human construct for that which does not exist in the real world.Photos: top left – Alvesgaspar; top middle & bottom left – Martin Bahmann; top right – Hisashi; bottom middle – Von.grzanka; bottom right – DovenotelThere are no cats in this picture.Now let’s look at the whole of the universe, represented by this whole uncut apple pie. We have one (1) pie, and when we take a piece of out of it, say one-fifth, we have one divided by five (1 ÷ 5) or 1/5. But what if we start with a universe of nothing? In this picture of the whole of everything represented by nothing, not even any pies, we can take a fifth out of this nothingness and have 0 ÷ 5 or 0/5, which equals zero. Another way of saying this would be that something cannot exist within nothing, or you can’t get something out of nothing.Photo by Jonathunder.We’re talking about numbers and math here, which involve definitions, so if you want to arbitrarily redefine things, you can call zero what used to be one and call one a purple rhinoceros and still be right within your personal made-up universe. The possibilities are endless in the realm of making stuff up. It stands to reason that this “zero is everything” idea should come out of the universe of queer theory, where queer includes all kinds of people who used to be straight but are now queer, along with all the queer people who used to be queer but are still queer. Queer means nothing anymore – in fact in postmodern queer theoryland everything means nothing anymore – so it stands to reason that nothing should now mean everything. It has a sort of balance. But maybe the source of the confusion comes from the symbol 0, which sortof looks like a pie. It’s the kind of mistake a child would make. You might infer, if you didn’t know any better, that the symbol 0 is defined as the number one, a word which has an O in it. Those of us who are not queerists pay attention in the first grade, at least one-fifth of the time, so we learn our numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., and we use the symbol 0 to designate nothing or as a place-holder. I recommend the first grade to everyone who still calls themselves “queer” and thinks it means something other than “I’m an idiot.” It might mean no longer embarrassing yourself, or zhir-self, or whOever zoo say zoo are.A picture of zero.
There are two things that interest me greatly as a Pagan priestess/teacher/thinker. The first is those things that are unremarked upon which nonetheless appear in passing again and again. Usually these are treasure troves of knowledge. An example of this would be the comb as a religious symbol. It is found in Neolithic art, ancient gravesites, and religious texts all over Europe and the Mediterranean, and persists long after Christianity has been established, yet it is not commonly thought of as one of our “magical tools.” It is scarcely ever remarked upon. It has also been an important symbol in Africa and Asia, and a great deal of research remains to be done about the significance of this very personal implement. I wrote an article about the comb for Return to Mago last year and barely scratched the surface. It’s a topic for an entire book.The second area of interest to me is those things that are remarked upon so often that they become rote. Usually there are unexamined assumptions and beliefs about ourselves that are hidden in these sayings, as well as unexamined meanings in the phrases themselves. An example of this would be the statement that “Paganism is a nature religion.” Is this something we say to distinguish ourselves from Judeo-Christian religions? Is it something we say to give ourselves legitimacy? Is it something we say in nostalgia for a lost relationship? Is it something we say because we learned somewhere that this is so? Is it something we say? Is it something we believe, is it something we wish, is it something we think about, is it something we do?The answer to these questions will vary not just among the individuals, but for the same person in different settings and at different stages of personal development. The most important thing is that these questions be asked, and asked again, and asked again. To me, following a “nature religion” means an ongoing commitment to a deepening experience within nature. It is active, dynamic, and ever changing. It is a mystery.I’m hoping to begin offering online classes soon on topics related to Pagan nature worship. My goal is to bring these topics to a more accessible virtual world, while at the same time inspiring the student to directly experience more in the natural world. The classes will be stand-alone and you will be able to take one or many. Here is a survey designed to help me identify potential topics.
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William H. Bates, the ophthamologist who developed the principles of natural vision.The three principles of natural vision are movement, centralization, and relaxation.Relaxation is meant in a very broad sense. The more relaxed the mind, the more clear the vision. The student who develops nearsightedness or astigmatism under a heavy courseload is tired and stressed, not “reading too much.” It is fine to read or do close work like needlepoint for long periods of time, even in low light, as long as this does not produce eyestrain. Straining to see worsens the vision, both immediately and in the long term. Relaxation improves vision, and eyestrain is reduced over time by trusting that good eyesight is natural over a wide range of conditions.We are not parakeets, who see only in daylight. Photo Dick Daniels.Centralization is a very interesting principle. The human eye is developed to see sharply in color and to see in very low light, two activities that are non-congruent. In order to function well in both areas, the central portion of the iris is adapted to sharp color vision, while the peripheral portion is activated in low light. Peripheral vision can detect motion quite well at all times, but it is not the portion of the eye that sees most clearly in normal light. In order to see clearly, it is important to see with the part of the eye that sees clearly. Instead of utilizing the entire visual field to “see everything at once,” the person with good vision moves her eyes constantly, mapping the area in front of her by looking at one thing at a time. This principle really goes back to the idea of relaxation, since it is a type of hypervigilance that creates the compulsion to try to see too much at once.The principle of centralization is obviously related to the principle of movement, but there are some implications to this principle that are not so obvious. Movement here is a broad term, related not only to eye movement but to blinking, moving the head, and changing the posture. It is unnatural for humans to sit stiffly or to stare without blinking, and this creates eyestrain and eventually fatigue. A relaxed posture contains movement. We are not cats, who stay motionless for long periods. Photo Horatiotorquez.But proper eye movement also creates a condition that is anxiety provoking for some people: it creates the perception that objects known to be stationary are actually moving. Nearly everyone is unaware of this. People with normal vision need to have this demonstrated to them with special eye exercises. Interestingly, people with poor vision will usually compensate in order to not see the movement when doing the exercises. For these people, beginning to see “stationary” objects move while doing the exercises is a sign that they are relaxing into normal eye movement.What are the implications for inner vision? I have found that these principles carry over into other areas. It is important to be relaxed in order to see on the inner plane. It is no accident that people tend to have more visions before drifting off to sleep or while doing ordinary activities such as taking a shower. It is important to let go of the compulsion to understand everything at once and allow the vision to naturally unfold. Trying to see everything at once inhibits the inner vision as well as the outer. It is most important to develop a frame of mind which allows perceptions to occur even when a part of the brain disagrees. The mind can draw its own conclusions, but it does not need to protect itself from the information it gathers.
Photo Mike BairdHappy Lammas!Very enjoyable book events in Keene Valley and Lake Placid last week, with some interesting discussion. This week I am off to Rochester for a book event at Psychic’s Thyme on August 1st, then I will be at Mystic Side in Syracuse for a signing at 6 o’clock on Friday, August 2nd. Mid-August I will again be traveling to the Lenape Festival.More events scheduled for September in Plattsburgh, Albany, and Manhattan. Stay tuned.Part two of my book excerpt, “The Animal Mother Goddess,” is at Return to Mago.Chapel Pond
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