100 ancient recipies

ANCIENT MEALS · 005 / 100 Old Babylonian Mari · Mari on the Euphrates, modern Syria · Approximately 1775–1761 BCE Evidence: archaeological reconstruction. The historical evidence and modern cooking choices are distinguished below. Jump to recipe The shopping list survives Sometimes the archive gives us dinner indirectly. A delivery record from Mari links dates and pistachios with making mersu for a royal meal. The Biblical Archaeology Society’s discussion explains how that administrative notice, rather than a complete cooking instruction, informs modern reconstructions. Its setting is the reign of Zimri-Lim in the eighteenth century BCE, on the Euphrates in what is now Syria. A quantity received by a palace is not a household recipe. It does not tell us whether the dates were boiled, whether flour entered another version, how large each portion was or what shape the finished food took. Modern enthusiasm sometimes turns this fragment into a confident claim about an exact ancient energ...