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Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

food in art
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
 food in art
From Prehistory to the Renaissance

Gillian Riley
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

REAKTION BOOKS
 Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
33 Great Sutton Street
London ec1v 0dx, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

First published 2015

Copyright © Gillian Riley 2015

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-
copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
publisher

Printed and bound in China by 1010 Printing International Ltd

isbn 978 1 78023 362 8

Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
 Contents

Introduction 7
one Glimpses of Food in the Palaeolithic World 13
two Eating in the Ancient Middle East:
Mesopotamia 25
three The Pleasures of Food in Ancient Egypt 41
four In Ancient Greece and Rome 61
five Bright Feasts in the Dark Ages 91
six The Middle Ages 97
seven Realism and Symbolism in the Renaissance
Kitchen 183
eight Late Renaissance Modernity 293

Select Bibliography 307

Acknowledgements 311
Photo Acknowledgements 312
Index 315
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
 Introduction

The art of cookery speaks for itself in recipe books and household
accounts, in menus and shopping lists, in the findings of archaeologists,
in the architecture of kitchens and dining rooms, and descriptions of
meals in literature. But perhaps the most vivid and tantalizing evidence
about what we ate and how we ate it is to be found in the fine and
applied arts. Some images seem to be straightforward depictions of
meals or ingredients, some have accidental information, part of the
background to a bible story or a mythological scene. Deciphering the
information and interpreting it is a stimulating challenge. Paintings
from the early Renaissance onwards have been a rich source of infor-
mation, but before then we have to look to illuminated manuscripts,
frescoes, sculpture, funerary monuments, ceramics and household goods.
This book attempts to connect gastronomy with these sources,
drawing on material from earliest times to the Late Renaissance.
There is visual information about provisions and markets, with
glimpses of plants, fruit, vegetables, fish, fowl and flesh, and how
they got to the domestic kitchen. Other images show kitchens, cooks
and food preparation, and feasting and fasting, the way rich and poor
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

enjoyed eating and drinking in both formal and low-key situations.

The sequence of illustrations and connected information is
unashamedly arbitrary. Some periods in history are well-stocked
with both facts and images, others are sparse, so there cannot be
a smooth flow of material, as in the many narrative histories of
gastronomy. Instead we offer a patchwork quilt of visual information
Georg Flegel and Lucas with related facts and comments. Images help our understanding of
van Valckenborch,
An Elderly Couple, texts, and written material explains the significance of pictures; they
1580s, oil on canvas. complement each other. Maestro Martino in Rome in the 1460s writes

7
 of starting a recipe by frying hard
cured pork fat cut into dice, while
a generation earlier an illuminated
health handbook, the Tacuinum
Sanitatis, illustrates a butcher cutting
up the fat exactly as he described.
Another illustration in the Tacuinum
shows a woman climbing a ladder
to get at a barrel of vinegar in the
attic, a funny place to store vinegar
one might think, but familiar to
connoisseurs of aceto balsamico
tradizionale di Modena, the genuine
balsamic vinegar, which matures
over the years under the roof,
mellowing in barrels of different
woods. It might be unwise to hail
Hildegard of Bingen as an early
advocate of wholefoods, but her
description of a state of mental and
physical equilibrium as ‘green’ is as
compelling as the almost abstract
mandelas which illustrate her treatise. Medical theories of the Hildegard of Bingen’s
diagram of the Four
time help us understand the content of Hildegard’s images. Her Humours.
diagram explaining the theory of the four humours us a lot about
both the abstract thought behind the diagram, and the down-to-
earth practical advice it contains, both of which directly affected
diet and cooking.
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

Visual and verbal information about ingredients and cooking

them does not always dovetail neatly. There are some periods
of history when we know from literary sources that banquets and
feasting were an important part of the fabric of life, but little visual
evidence survives for us to look at. For example we have no contem-
porary images of the notorious Viking feasts referred to in Nordic
literature, when loyalty, treachery, gross drunkenness and lavish
hospitality often resulted in bloodshed and mayhem in settings
of rich splendour. The Sagas of the Icelanders tell us little of

8
 the passive pastoral life on their farmsteads (fishing, husbandry,
dairying, making textiles and metalwork) or the canny mercantile
activities that kept afloat the voyages of discovery and colonization,
but go on at tedious length about their interminable genealogy.
Apart from drinking horns, hardly an object connected with food
survives. Archaeology tells of the structure and organization of the
farmsteads, but there is no sight of the details of cooking and eating.
Our quest is to get information about these things, so we plunder
works of art for sightings of ingredients, kitchens, banquets and
simple meals.
Some iconic animals, like the bull, can be symbols of strength
and power, but also a reminder of their use as draught animals, and
their eventual recycling as a slow-cooked beef stew, like the traditional
Roman recipe described by Ada Boni, Coda alla Vaccinara, oxtail stew,
or the slow-cooked Garofolato, in which shin of beef is simmered for
hours in wine and aromatics, especially cloves (garofoli).
There are some descriptions or summaries of recipes which
illuminate a period or theme, like Maestro Martino’s Chicken with
Verjuice from the early Renaissance, a classic dish with the simplicity
of a Masaccio fresco, where chicken joints are fried in diced bacon
and then simmered in verjuice (seeded and crushed unripe grapes)
and finished with chopped fresh herbs; or the ‘fusion’ Mole Poblano
of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, in seventeenth-century Puebla de los
Angeles, with its symbolic mixture of indigenous Mexican ingredients
(chillies and chocolate) and spices and nuts from the Spanish
conquistadors. Perhaps the most subtle rendering of recipes is to
be discovered in the still-lifes of Luis Egidio Meléndez, where his
selection of items can be interpreted as the menus and recipes
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

of a typical housewife in eighteenth-century Madrid.

Some key recipes like the biancomangiare, or ‘white dish’, of
medieval haute cuisine are not to be found in the many images
of banquets, but the prestige of this unearthly pure white dish is
echoed in the white linen and glistening silver of table settings.
Cooked chicken breasts were pounded in a mortar with ground
almonds, and thinned with a clear spiced chicken broth. The
strangely named cameline sauce is equally invisible, but the wide
range of recipes for it show that the warm reddish-brown pigment

9
 of cinnamon and other costly spices must have given it a colour like
the unfamiliar exotic camel.
Ideal descriptions and representations of cooks and kitchens are
contrasted with crude images of the down-to-earth reality: statuesque
kitchen goddesses and grumpy male cooks. Many cookery manuals
describe the ideal cook or chief steward as an almost superhuman
being, whose intelligence, purity of mind and body and refined skills
are more awesome than any image.
Much of the drudgery and pleasure of preparing and enjoying
food has been celebrated in art, from chaotic kitchen scenes to
elegant banquets, from idealized gardens to fruit stalls loaded with
symbolism as well as fresh garden products. Food historians can
learn a lot from these, either to flesh out written or printed texts or
as information otherwise unavailable.
The toil of searching for food and preparing it is usually compen-
sated for by the delights of feasting, and there are images of meals of
all kinds, from harvesters eating hungrily from a communal dish, to
a carefully hierarchical hunt picnic, to royal banquets and homely
domestic repasts.
In earlier periods the aromas of cooking, however primitive, and
the sensual pleasures of taste and texture were linked to sacrificial
rituals. ‘Give the gods a roast! A roast!’ was intoned by priests in
the great temples of Mesopotamia, where the gods were offered
delicious morsels by worshippers who shared their tastes. In classical
Greece we have no visual evidence of this, in spite of literary
references, and the Minoan bull was an object of worship, not
for the pot. The kebabs of hunter heroes, the gobbets of meat
from spit-roasted cattle or sheep, are an elusive aroma wafting
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

through poetry and legend, but we have no visible sign of these

earlier meals. Archaeologists and anthropologists tell us of the
social and political significance of feasts and hunting, or sacrificial
offerings, and sometimes, occasionally, there is visual evidence for
their insights, but our search for information yields little when we
go back to prehistory, so all we can show from cave art are animals
that were probably hunted for food.
As well as food and ingredients we find details of table settings,
serving rituals, décor and manners. Bible stories and historical

10
 events are often illustrated with
details drawn from everyday life,
and it is possible to negotiate a
cautious path among symbols,
like bread and wine, and objects
in daily use, from deep tumblers
to shallow Venetian glass tazzas.
Petronilla’s woven tablecloth and
the turkey carpet of a Dutch still-
life, with a rumpled linen napkin
and silver and glass goblets, are the
fabric of daily life and there for us
to discover.
The man pensively picking
his teeth with a two-pronged
fork in a Veronese banquet
scene on page 295 is deploying
the implement precisely as it
was intended to be used, to
spear up sticky preserves, and
then use as a toothpick, at the
end of a long and luxurious
meal. Students of the material
world of eating implements
Girl with a toothpick can supplement written sources with this and other vivid and
featured in Paolo
Veronese, The Wedding convincing images.
Feast at Cana, 1562–3, This book does not wish to duplicate any of the many excellent
oil on canvas.
illustrated histories of food, but it tries to bring a selection of written
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

and visual evidence together, for food and art lovers, from the vast
range of available material.

11
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
 one

Glimpses of Food in
the Palaeolithic World

Early art might tell us something about the importance of food; we can
try to interpret cave paintings, small sculptures, patterns scratched on
tools, in an attempt to find out about what people ate and how they
sourced and prepared it.

Cave Art – Pantry or Pantheon?

Early man hunted, gathered and ate without leaving much of a trace.
Nothing is known about the artists who drew animals and signs on
the walls of caves in the Palaeolithic era. Some of their pigments can
be carbon dated, their techniques deduced, and most of their subjects
easily recognized, but we are not certain why they produced these
amazing works of art, or for what purpose. The images do provide
evidence of the presence of certain animals, and might give us an idea
of how men felt about them. Spirits to be propitiated and worshipped,
food to be caught and eaten, interior decoration, or the graffiti of
testosterone-troubled young adult males. Theories abound. Pantry or
pantheon? Bestiary or bande dessinée? How the artists learnt the skills
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

and techniques to achieve what they did is a mystery, their ability to

convey the appearance and essence of an animal with a few painted or
engraved outlines and colour masses is miraculous. The sophisticated
skills involved must have been taught and finely honed by Palaeolithic
man for approximately 20,000 years, and cave art was produced dur-
ing this huge time span by intelligent, gifted members of a civilization
Animals on the wall of that taught and passed down skills and beliefs over the generations.
the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc
Cave, southern France, This was a time when animals ruled the earth, enormous numbers
c. 30,000 bc. of them, and man was a puny creature, hunting them for food and

13
 Bison in the Chauvet
Cave, c. 30,000 bc.

Bison in the Altamira

Cave, Cantabria, Spain,
14,000 to 20,000 bc.
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
 hide and fur, but awed by their strength and size and beauty and
fecundity. Man loved and may have worshipped them, and as a
hunter he observed them closely, learnt their ways, how to read
their tracks, and how and when to kill for food. His life followed
their movements, and his survival depended on a deep understanding
of their ways. Caves, especially those in the cliffs on either side of
the Pyrenees, were not ideal for living in, but were a good place to
make and preserve art. Their overhang provided shelter for huts and
protection from attack, and from the top of the cliff there was a good
view of approaching animals or enemies. Inside the caves irregular
spaces and passageways and tunnels were exploited to picture these
animals. Bulges and curves in the walls and ceilings suggested humps
and bellies, fault lines in rock became outlines or dividing lines. The
artists were conjuring up beings that were already there in the rock,
like Michelangelo’s statues, liberated by the artist’s skills and intellect.

Edible Art?
Artefacts surviving from the Ice Age are hard to interpret: an
engraved bone could have been a tool, or an ornament, or an object
of worship. A horse, carved on a horse’s jaw-bone, could be just a
decorative pattern, or it might have been a symbol of the power and
intelligence and wisdom invoked to guide the tool and its user. The
bison grooming its flank is a beautiful, tenderly observed creature,
drawn on a piece of a reindeer antler. It shows more affection than
the distorted little statuettes or pendants of blowsy pregnant women,
ugly in their fecundity. These figurines may have been a way of
celebrating birth and renewal, or a dread of too many mouths to
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

feed. We can only guess.

And we know nothing at all about these gifted artists and how
they lived and thought, or the social organization that required
and made possible their achievements. Proponents of deep history
perceive a ‘modern mind’ improbably lurking somewhere in the
Ice Age, but this cannot explain the mystery of the art.
Not all the animals represented in cave art were edible, and
very few are shown dead or being cut up, and there are no images
of cooking, as vital an activity as hunting. This is where the

15
 multi-disciplinary approach helps. Gregory Curtis explains how
archaeologists have found some signs of human activity, preparing
and storing food, in or near the caves, and these ‘culinary samples’,
bones and fragments of cooked animals, might illuminate the
relationship between food and art. But a survey using statistical
methods shows that there is no correlation between the animals
eaten and the animals represented in cave art or on artefacts found
close to each other. These artefacts were sometimes decorated with
animal images, but reindeer, who were eaten most, were not depicted
as frequently. One theory is that their predictable migratory patterns
made them easy prey, that and their stupidity, which meant that
humans had no need of divine intervention when hunting deer. They
could harvest them as they munched away at wild grasses, like pluck-
ing ripe fruit from a branch. The image of deer swimming across a
river, heads held high, in the Lascaux caves, gives some idea of their
predictability.

Hunter’s Magic or Politics?

Aurochs and bison were both ancestors of domesticated cattle, and
there are other kinds of deer, horses and wild boar, all of which
were eaten. Some of them seem to be hunted, some driven, some
confronting each other, others attacked by predatory wild cats and
leopards, some engaged in affectionate greeting, but the majority are
in calm, static postures, without a base line or background. Groupings
of creatures might indicate legends or stories, known to the artists, but
lost to us, and so could have been read as illustrations of these stories,
with the indecipherable symbols and marks perhaps as captions. Or
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

the animals could have been symbols of powers and principalities

that we have lost all knowledge of.
Early theories about cave art, based on the great erudition and
insights of the historian Abbé Breuil, became fixed certainties. His
conviction that the art was hunting magic, supernatural help in getting
food, was universally accepted. Half a century after the discovery of
Lascaux in the 1940s historians began to pursue other interpretations.
The awe and wonder experienced in the caves, the impact of the
numinous animal forms glimpsed in a flickering light, painted on

16
 A cow from the wall uneven surfaces, seen from different angles with changing perspectives,
of the Lascaux Caves,
Dordogne, France,
is so moving that the intuitive emotional response got in the way of
c. 15,000 bc; it has critical analysis.
been wounded by These later historians set to work with computer images and
a spear.
rigorous statistical methodology, pursuing the how and when, not the
why of the art. André Leroi-Gourhan and others worked on a rational
examination of the groupings of animals, their location in the overall
scheme of a cave, the different postures and behaviour, their colouring
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

and the accompanying signs and marks, to postulate underlying

intentions by the artists, who in various sites tended to place static
hierarchical creatures in a central group surrounded by animals in
movement, and peripheral activities happening round the edges.
Deep questioning and rigorous observation led Leroi-Gourhan to
the conclusion that the images of animals represented perceptions of
fertility and male/female duality, expressed in stories and myths now
lost to us. Fertility was both a blessing and a problem, in man and the
animal world; high infant mortality meant a need for fecund females,

17
 but too many mouths to feed was a threat to survival, so fertility and
its control was important. Other interpretations see the animals as
symbolic of clans and groups of people, and the groupings as historical
narratives, full of genealogy like the Icelandic sagas. A later view
postulates the presence of shamans, high on hallucinatory visions due
to poor air quality, fasting, the ingestion of possibly mind-bending
substances, and the flickering effect of torchlight, producing these
skilled images in trance-like states, to impress for all time an amazed
and probably cowed populace.
Interdisciplinary studies also help in attempts to understand the
paintings. Dale Guthrie in Alaska writes of Palaeolithic art from the
point of view of a zoologist and hunter, claiming that the images
were created by hunters for hunters, in a macho rather than a mystical
frame of mind. Living hunting lore casts light on Stone Age behaviour,
to some extent, though female politicians shooting endangered species
from a helicopter might not be a helpful example. The male pleasure
in the chase, its rituals and outcome (lots of crudely cooked meat,
boasting and competitiveness) might be the mainspring of cave art,
which Dale Guthrie sees in the graffiti and decorated objects associated
with the caves. The obese female statuettes are soft porn, not fertility
symbols, the engravings scratched on bones and stones could be casual
jottings, like graffiti at bus stops.
Cave art shows a pleasure in beauty that might have been found in
other Palaeolithic things that have perished, like textiles and decorative
clothing, jewellery and soft furnishings. But there is no way of know-
ing if this highly sophisticated appreciation of good things applied to
food and cooking. We can only speculate, and try and deduce a little
from these amazing and mysterious images of animals.
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

It is strange that these hunter-gatherers never painted the

vegetation that was so important to them, not just the nuts and
seeds and grain from wild plants that they ate themselves, but the
all-important grazing of the wild beasts on whose movements all
life depended. The climate of the late Ice Age favoured vast steppes
and pasture lands where the ruminant animals and their predators
roamed. When climate change brought changes in vegetation and
its distribution this way of life ceased to exist, and the cave artists
painted no more.

18
 Researching the Stone Age Diet
Stone Age diet survived in the Arctic where, from 1908 to 1919,
Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, an explorer and adventurer as well as an
anthropologist, lived first among the Inuit of the Mackenzie
Delta, learned their language and its many dialects, and adopted
their lifestyle with enthusiasm, and then moved eastwards to search
for the Copper Inuit who had had no previous encounter with white
men. They were living in the same state as their Stone Age ancestors,
and Stefánsson realized that to survive he would have to do the
same as them, hunting and fishing the way they did, and he did
not just survive on their food, he grew to love it. Back in New
York he embarked on an experimental all-meat diet, lots of lightly
cooked fatty meat, and ‘by the end of January 1928, I was convinced
that I was healthier on the Stone Age regimen than I had ever before
been on any diet or in any way of life. I already liked the same things
the Eskimos liked about their food, and I had never liked any food
better’. Nutritionally the absence of vegetables, grains and fruit was
compensated for by the vitamin C in the meat and fat, along with
certain vital amino acids. So much for the Mediterranean diet.
Stefánsson threw to his dogs the parts we most esteem. His Inuit
friends loved the chewy fatty cuts, and the tasty meats that clung to
cooked bones; the tenderloin or fillet went straight to the dogs, along
with the saddle, haunch and rump. Stefánsson describes how caribou
meat was divided between a family and its dogs: ‘The children get the
kidneys and the leg marrows nearest the hoof. All Eskimos known to
me think the sweetest meat is nearest the bone; they boil the hams and
round shoulder bones and the children pick from these the cooked lean
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

that goes so pleasantly with the uncooked fat of the raw lower marrows.
Perhaps the whole family and any visitors will share the boiled caribou
head. The Eskimo likes the tongue well enough, and the brains; but
what he prefers from the head is the jowl, and after that, the pads of
fat behind the eyes. His next preference is brisket, then ribs, then
pelvis. From the hams and shoulders he will peel off the outside meat
as dog food, but will keep some of the inside meat for his family’.
This gives us some idea of the way the cave artists might have
enjoyed their meat. Archaeologists have found evidence of venison

19
 prepared and eaten near to painted caves, and bones from meat eaten
in them, probably by the artists as they worked. This diet seems to
have kept them healthy, tall and strong, with a life span of about
fifty years.
But unlike the cave artists, modern Inuit beliefs about the animals
– seals, caribou and fish, on which their existence depended – are well
documented. Stefánsson learnt the language and collected legends and
information that help us understand their way of life and their art in
a way that can never be done for the Stone Age artists. But Stefánsson
was recording the last remnants of a threatened civilization, while the
cave artists of Spain and France had enjoyed over a thousand genera-
tions of sameness and stability, time to evolve a rich artistic culture.
Surviving Inuit artefacts from the Dorset period, 500 bc–ad 1500,
are mainly tools and implements, and some small figurines to hold in
the hand, toys for children or ritual objects for shamans, all connected A Yupik Eskimo
with the task of finding food. model kayak.
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

20
 Fine Dining in the Neolithic Age
Other artists did leave indirect evidence of attitudes to food and
eating. Over 9,000 years ago, the Neolithic inhabitants of a large
urban development at Çatalhöyük near today’s Konya, in Anatolia,
Turkey, created a complex cluster of about 300 houses and huts, with
at times up to 8,000 inhabitants living and working together, on a site
of 32 acres, possibly even before mankind had evolved from hunter-
gatherer to farmer. For thousands of years they inhabited the site,
surrounded by a river and some stagnant marshland, far from possible
crops, and not suitable for husbandry. As house walls crumbled, they
were pulled down, smashed to bits, and a fresh new home built on
top. A mound or tell was formed from these layers of occupation,
rising above the surrounding plain. The people seemed content to
commute, hunting wild animals and game, gathering seeds and
plants, and eventually farming.
It is debatable whether there was architecture before agriculture;
but there is certainly architecture and interior decoration in
Çatalhöyük, sophisticated murals and patterned walls, and the
heads of wild bulls mounted on pillars, or displayed as adjuncts
to furniture.
While agriculture was still in its infancy husbandry and the
pursuit of wild meat co-existed with the gathering of wild plants
and the manipulation of crops. It has been argued that the mental
and spiritual evolution that created the social skills needed to live
together in a dense urban community, while resisting the forces
of nature, were a prerequisite for the evolution of the farmer. The
inhabitants of Çatalhöyük seem to have got it right. Excavations
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

reveal storage systems in the houses for grains and seeds from wild
and cultivated crops, pots and pestles and mortars for preparation,
and hearths and ovens to cook in. The murals showing the hunt
of aurochs and red deer seem frolicsome and daredevil, with puny
men taunting these huge fierce beasts, and the analysis of kitchen
and midden remains seems to show that their meat was the main
ingredient of feasts and banquets, while domesticated sheep and
goats were eaten for everyday meals. So the horned heads of the
wild bull could have been the trophies of festive feasts rather than

21
 mystic symbols of fertility gods and powerful earth mothers; they
were displayed as visible signs of valour and social superiority,
reminders that he who killed the auroch earned the prestige of hosting a
celebratory banquet. An auroch was an awful lot of meat, which
would not keep, but could be shared, so the social organization that
planned the hunt would plan the celebratory banquet. Guests saw
these horns and skulls as they climbed down the ladder from the
rooftop entrance to marvel at the cool, calm interior beneath, freshly
plastered walls and cleanly swept floors, and patterned rugs echoing
the decorative murals. Examination of bones associated with cooking Bulls’ horns in situ
show how meat was butchered and processed, cooked and served. in the excavations at
Çatalhöyük, Turkey;
The meat could have been stewed or roasted in ovens, some indoors, they date from between
some up on the roof. 7500 and 5700 bc.
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22
 A reconstruction of the
Catalhöyük bull mural.

While the art in Çatalhöyük supplements what archaeology tells us

of Neolithic food and feasting, some aspects of the Stone Age diet can
be found in other societies, especially attitudes to meat, and how it was
eaten. Meanwhile the kebabs of hunter heroes, the slabs of meat from
spit-roasted cattle, remain an elusive aroma wafting through poetry
and legend, with hardly any visible evidence.
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23
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
 two

Eating in the Ancient

Middle East: Mesopotamia

Once written records begin, evidence about food appears in literature,

poetry and hymns, backed up by humdrum book-keeping and palace
accounts. Incidental details in religious art, or the monumental celebra-
tion of mighty rulers, show tantalizing glimpses of agriculture and the
search for provisions. Fragments of pottery can yield hard facts about what
was cooked and served in them, and their shape and decoration can tell
us more. Science and art join us in a search for evidence.

His Face Shone with Delight

In the epic of Gilgamesh the wild man Enkidu, primitive inhabitant
of the wilderness beyond the civilized urban centres, ate wild grasses
Assyrian dog-walkers
and drank the milk of wild animals, like the Palaeolithic hunter-
on a plaster wall-relief gatherers. He was tamed, seduced and civilized by the goddess of
from the time of
Ashurbanipal, 645–635
Joyfulness, who introduced him first to the pastoral culture of the
bc, leading animals to shepherds and herdsmen, with their sophisticated dairy products,
the hunt, with a back-
ground of lush fruits
then tempted him with those voluptuous staples of urban life,
and foliage. bread and beer:
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So then he ate Bread

Until no longer hungry!
And he drank Beer:
Seven pots!
Then his soul was happy and at ease,
His body so ravished
That his face shone with delight!

25
 The social and nutritional delights of beer are described in more
detail below. But alongside this pastoral life the primitive joys of the
chase continued to flourish. The search for wild creatures, and the
sport of chasing animals bred for the hunt, produced food for the pot.
Deer parks and rabbit warrens were created to provide pleasure as well
as provisions, and from earliest times hunting was a sport as well as
a way of foraging for food. An early example of the complexity of
food supplies was in the provisioning of the temples of Mesopotamia.
Here, in the land where civilized life began, there are hymns, sculpture
and masses of accounts and records of transactions to do with hunting
and eating, that tell us how the hunger of the gods was assuaged, and
how humans fed as well. ‘Give the gods a roast! A roast!’ was intoned
by priests as the gods were offered delicious morsels by worshippers
who shared their tastes.
Pitting one’s wits against the strong and the brave, relishing the
danger and the delights of success, conquering the invincible and
subduing the mighty, then eating the outcome, the sport of kings
has been celebrated alongside battles and warfare in literature and art.
The Assyrian lion hunt is perhaps the extreme form of this relish
for cruelty and danger, seen in bas-reliefs that were part of the interior
decoration of the royal palace at Nineveh around 645 bc. Some reliefs
depict the dead beasts carried back in triumph, as trophies rather than
food. But more importantly, in the backgrounds are glimpses of trees
and gardens, rivers full of fish, grape vines and herded animals, and
even a field kitchen (see opposite) and preparations for the hunt
picnic, where attendants bring game and dishes of prepared food
for the hungry hunters.
A contemporary account of the glories of Ashurbanipal’s reign has
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the emperor claim:

Ninurta and Palil, to whom my ministry is beloved, granted me the

wild animals of the field and bade me go hunting. I killed 450 mighty
lions and I slew 300 wild beasts with [the help of] my . . . chariots and
in the onslaught of my sovereign dignity; I brought down 5oo ostriches,
as if [they were] birds in a cage, and 1oo elephants did I capture . . . 50
live wild bulls, 140 live ostriches, 20 mighty lions did I catch with my
weapons and my . . . five wild elephants did I receive from the governor

26
 A Mesopotamian ‘field
kitchen’, in a detail
from a bas-relief of
Ashurbanipal ii,
9th century bc.

of Suhi and the governor of Lubda; they came with me on my march.

I gathered herds of bulls, lions and ostriches and male and female monkeys
and I let them breed. To the land of Assyria I added more land, and to
its people more peoples . . .

The survival of the cities and dynasties of Mesopotamia depended

on the management of a fertile terrain with a wayward climate;
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storms, floods, drought and plagues of locusts were some of the

hazards that threatened crops and cattle. People came to terms
with these hostile forces by listing, codifying, describing and
classifying in an attempt to control them. Another strategy was
to placate the gods who were responsible for this often irrational
world, so superstition and bookkeeping were equal partners in the
battle for survival. The gods had many of the equivocal qualities of
the kings and priests they had kinship with; they had to be placated,
bribed and pacified. Notes were taken, lists made, bargains struck.

27
 Calming the rages of the gods and the elements was vital to the The ‘Standard
of Ur’, 2500 bc,
temple dwellers for the preservation of the agriculture and trading an enigmatic object,
that made them wealthy. depicting temple
offerings.
The temple was the earthly home of the god in the city dedicated
to him. It housed the temple officials who administered and traded in
this massive influx of goods and foodstuffs, as well as those responsible
for the religious rites of feeding the divine being twice daily. Food
and drink were what the gods liked, so ‘Give the gods a roast!’ was
a sensible pragmatic hymn. The offerings to the gods, after their
acceptance, were given to the king and the temple staff, a trickle-
down that suited all parties. Something similar is shown on one side
of the strangely named ‘Standard of Ur’ (above). This object, which
looks like a box, may or may not have been displayed on top of a
pole as a standard in battle. The fragments were pieced together from
a mass of inlay fragments discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley in 1920.
The scenes depicted on the sides of the box-like structure have been
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described as a battle scene with a subsequent celebratory banquet,

but Neil McGregor lucidly interprets the scenes in the context of
a sophisticated society based on a surplus of agricultural products,
which paid the wages of these placid dignitaries, seen here representing
the power of a state based on commerce and warfare, rather than just
any old celebratory banquet.
Offerings to the god in his temple were abundant, as this fraction
from ‘Nanna’s Hymn’ shows, telling the story of Nanna-Su’en’s visit
to his parents, the deities Enlil and Ninlil, in their temple in Nippur.

28
 Open the temple, oh porter! Kalkal! Open the temple!
I bring herds of grazing beef:
For me, Nanna-Su’en, open the temple,
the temple of Enlil, oh porter!
I bring fattened sheep:
for me, Asimbabbar, open the temple,
the temple of Enlil, oh porter!
I have emptied my stockyard:
for me, Nanna-S’uen, open the temple,
the temple of Enlil, oh porter!
I have fattened my goats with gruel:
for me, Asimbabbar, open the temple, the temple of Enlil, oh porter!
I bring suckling pigs:
for me, Nanna-Su’en, open the temple,

[from here the repetition of ‘oh porter!’ is omitted]

I, Asimbabbar, bring dormice:

I bring small singing birds:
I have brought my poultry yard of small fowl:
I have brought rabbits from my warren:
I have quantities of giant carp . . .
I have carp from my ponds . . .
I have a profusion of oil and soothing beer . . .
I have baskets full of eggs . . .
I procured the tender shoots of reeds . . .
I have taken many lambkins from their dams,
and driven them along the banks of the Turungal . . .
My billy-goats have sired many kids,
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which I have taken from their mothers . . .

My bulls have fathered calves
which I have taken from quantities of cows
along the banks of the Turungal . . .
Open the temple, porter! Kalkal! Open the temple!

Some of these offerings can be seen in an impression from a cylinder

seal (overleaf), where they are being off-loaded at the temple: two
goats, a sheep, scorpions and a snake, symbols of fertility, and

29
 An Akkadian cylinder
seal of c. 2250 bc
showing a shepherd
and his dog with
two markhor goats
and a sheep. The
discs may represent
air-drying cheeses.

some pots, perhaps of beer. When it came to go home, Nanna had

more prayers:

Grant me, Enlil, grant me

A safe return to Ur!
Grant me the turn of the tide [bore of the tide]
that I might return to Ur!
Grant me grain in the fields until late,
and a safe return to Ur!
Grant me freshwater carp and giant carp in my ponds,
and a safe return to Ur!
Grant me tender reeds and fresh shoots in the marshes,
and a safe return to Ur!
Grant me ibex and mountain sheep in the thickets,
and a safe return to Ur!
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Grant me syrups and wine in the orchards,

and a safe return to Ur!
Grant me at last a long life in the royal palace,
and a safe return to Ur!

30
 e Birth of Writing
Enlil’s safe return to Ur was a trading venture, typical of how surplus
agricultural products were stored and exchanged. Merchants and
dealers dealt in grain and textiles for luxury goods like silks and
wine, metals and spices, up and down the major rivers and canals
of Mesopotamia. This was where writing began, for the most down
to earth of reasons – keeping accounts of the supply of provisions
for temples and palaces, logging in deliveries of goods, and seeing
to their distribution. Language was first written down as ledgers,
not literature. Over centuries recognizable signs for things became
stylized, constructed from abstract triangular marks, made with a
triangular cut reed or stylus on cushions of soft clay, with scope for
grammatical expressions and complex meanings. Cuneiform script
evolved from these pictograms into combinations of wedge-shaped
strokes. These tablets could be dried in the sun, or baked to become
unbreakable, and many have been preserved for centuries. When
libraries or archives were burned by attackers, the baked clay sur-
vived, stronger than ever. The language systems used, the different
conventions of mathematical reckoning and the many ways of laying
out a tablet were complicated and difficult to execute and read,
so scribes had a long hard apprenticeship and a professional life of
considerable prestige thereafter. Kings and priests depended on them,
and so do we, for information about the smooth running of official
life, but so complex was the system that there was little possibility
of discovering the ‘laundry list’ sort of ephemeral jottings written by
ordinary persons that might have shed light on the trivialities of
everyday life. Only a few tablets of recipes survived while bills of
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lading and promissory notes, ordinances and regulations exist in

their thousands.
On one tablet, the sign for beer, is a conical vessel, a recognizably
human head with a food bowl, similar to a style of crude ceramic
pot found all over Mesopotamia, perhaps depicted as a measure
by volume of goods like grains or beer. These early written records
described the carefully monitored ebb and flow of provisions in and
out of temples and palaces, as celebrated in the hymn.

31
 Seals for Security and Propitiation
Additional measures were taken by using seals impressed on the
fastenings of bales and vessels, to prevent pilfering and adulteration.
These were frequently cylindrical in shape and were rolled over soft clay
to reveal scenes involving gods or mortals. They were often made of
semi-precious stones like agate or lapis lazuli, and pierced to be worn
as jewellery or good luck charms. The engravers worked first with
gravers and files, and centuries later also used drills and rotary saws
with amazing skill and precision. These cylinder seals tell us a lot about
religion and daily life in tiny thumbnail sketches full of endearing detail
– offerings of cattle driven to the temple, groups of men feasting or
drinking, a couple enjoying a meal in a shady garden, as well as gods
and heroes fighting wild animals, driving chariots, or man presenting
offerings to the gods. We seize on the homely images, but in fact the
seals had a serious purpose, not just practical and decorative, but as
magic charms to ward off evil, or invocations to the gods for whose
pleasure the sealed goods and baled products were intended.

Home-brew and Industrial Beer

In ancient Mesopotamia the ebb and flow of the river waters,
the movement of goods and produce up and down the Tigris
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Detail from the

‘Standard of Ur’,
showing men drinking.

32
 Important and the Euphrates, the management of resources and commerce,
Mesopotamian
personages drinking all called for a literate administrative class as well as a powerful
beer through straws priesthood and a docile population. These cheerful, clean-shaven,
from a communal pot,
or some other brew close-cropped, self-confident, smiling civil servants or priests in
from conical vessels, on their flounced skirts or kilts sit in profile, sipping wine from conical
a cylinder seal from Ur
from about 2600 bc. goblets, receiving offerings of cattle, sheep, goats and fish, borne in
by other officials. This is thought to be tribute from the successful
battle shown on the other side of the Standard of Ur, but it gives
some idea of the rituals around the receipt and consumption of
goods for the temple.
We see quite a lot of these self-contained gentlemen, on funerary
monuments and seals, sitting comfortably, holding goblets in their
right hands in a ritual gesture, and sometimes drinking beer through
straws from large jars. This was not an effete habit, for the beer had
a slushy bitter-tasting residue at the bottom of the containers, and
debris floating on top, so the straws enabled the drinker to draw off
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the fairly clear fluid while avoiding the sludge. Mugs and beakers
were also used.
It has been suggested that the porridge-like by-products of brewing
were an important part of the diet. Nutritionally beer was better for
you than boiled or baked grains, and it has even been postulated that
hunter-gatherers were first inspired to settle comfortably in one spot
by the pleasures of beer drinking, cultivating grains and seeds, while
their womenfolk worked on the home-brew and the baking, thus
inventing agriculture.

33
 A Hymn to the Beer Goddess
Beers of many kinds were brewed from toasted bread and grains,
sweetened and flavoured with dates and a variety of herbs and
plants, and their benign effect was celebrated in songs and legends.
A hymn to Ninkasi the beer goddess describes the complex process
in bewildering detail, which an enterprising brewer in California
has used to make a plausible Mesopotamian beer, but a lot remains
unclear. This hymn was inscribed on a clay tablet in the nineteenth
century bc:

Borne of the flowing water . . .

Tenderly cared for by the Ninhursag,
Borne of the flowing water . . .
Tenderly cared for by the Ninhursag.

Having founded your town by the sacred lake,

She finished its great walls for you,
Ninkasi, having founded your town by the sacred lake,
She finished its great walls for you . . .

You are the one who handles the dough,

[and] with a big shovel,
Mixing in a pit, the bappir with sweet aromatics,
Ninkasi, You are the one who handles
the dough, [and] with a big shovel,
Mixing in a pit, the bappir with [date]-honey.
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You are the one who bakes the bappir

in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,
Ninkasi, you are the one who bakes
the bappir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,

You are the one who waters the malt

set on the ground,

34
 The noble dogs keep away even the potentates,
Ninkasi, you are the one who waters the malt
set on the ground,
The noble dogs keep away even the potentates.

You are the one who soaks the malt in a jar

The waves rise, the waves fall.
Ninkasi, you are the one who soaks
the malt in a jar
The waves rise, the waves fall.

You are the one who spreads the cooked

mash on large reed mats,
Coolness overcomes.
Ninkasi, you are the one who spreads
the cooked mash on large reed mats,
Coolness overcomes.

You are the one who holds with both hands

the great sweet wort,
Brewing [it] with honey and wine
(You the sweet wort to the vessel)
Ninkasi, . . .
(You the sweet wort to the vessel)

The filtering vat, which makes

a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on [top of]
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a large collector vat.

Ninkasi, the filtering vat,
which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on [top of]
a large collector vat.
When you pour out the filtered beer
of the collector vat,
It is [like] the onrush of
Tigris and Euphrates.

35
 Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the
filtered beer of the collector vat,
It is [like] the onrush of
Tigris and Euphrates.

Micro-beer-makers have followed this with credible results.

Rain and Irrigation

Irrigation had uses far beyond royal gardens, for the agriculture
which was the economic foundation of cities depended on bringing
water from the two great rivers in systems, which at best ensured a
succession of good crops, and at worst a deterioration of soil quality
due to a build-up of salt and minerals, left behind as excess water
evaporated in the hot dry atmosphere. This so reduced the fertility
of the land that a superfluity of the elements that had made life
possible many millions of years ago eventually rendered it inimical
to life. Cities languished when rivers and canals silted up, and
agriculture withered when the soil was poisoned. Proud cities
crumbled into dust, and only dim mounds of layer upon layer
of clay ruins remained to tease the imagination of later ages.
Warfare and conquest accounted for much of this instability, but
land management contributed too. The great irrigation projects,
masterminded by vast city-based bureaucracies, were a triumph
of engineering over local common sense. Tribal societies had used
simpler irrigation systems combined with leaving land fallow to
recover from the salt and mineral imbalance, using wild plants to
put nutrients back into the soil, also as grazing for animals; the
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wisest rulers followed this pattern, combining farming and grazing

with trading and warfare.
There was little rain in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates,
but storms and erratic rainfall in the sources of the rivers caused
flash floods on the plains as banks burst or overflowed, and so the
management of artificial earthworks and canals was a top priority.
Mesopotamian civilization depended on water control as well as
irrigation, and so when royal command could exploit an existing
system of canals and dams and flood barriers, the gardens that

36
 A modern resulted can be seen as a logical extension of a technology already
reconstruction of
the original colouring in existence. This reconstruction of a monochrome relief sculpture
on a 7th-century showing how its original colours might have looked illustrates,
bc plaster bas-relief
from the palace of although the perspective is confusing, how water was brought in
Ashurbanipal at conduits and on aqueducts to create a garden, with some of the
Nineveh gives some
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idea of the appearance features in the Diodorus Siculus description.

of an Assyrian garden, In this dry land vegetation was treasured, from shade trees to
here watered by
an aqueduct. fresh herbs, and a tablet survives listing those in a royal Babylon
garden in the seventh century bc. There are 68 plants, 40 of them
as yet unidentified; among the ones we know are garlic, onions, leeks,
shallots, various kinds of lettuce, rocket, cress, turnip, cucumber, melon,
as well as coriander, fennel, fenugreek, mint, dill, rue, oregano and
thyme. Many of these are specified in the much earlier recipe tablets at
Yale, studied by Jean Bottéro – leeks, garlic, onions, cumin, coriander,

37
 anise, mint, rue, rocket, beetroot, ‘aromatic barks’ (cinnamon),
‘green herbs’ unspecified, and some unknown ingredients – zurumu,
samidu, kissimmu, suhutinnu, halazzu, hirsu, perhaps as long lost as
the treasured sylphium of ancient Rome, similar to asafoetida, and the
curious parasitic herb dodder, cuscuta, with its astringent bitterness.
Dodder, related to morning glory, is a puzzling element in many stews
and cooked dishes. It is a strange predatory growth which literally
sniffs its way towards vegetation that it can attach itself to, sucking
nourishment from it, and so taking on many of the properties of its
host. Some authorities suggest that dodder might have been used in
beer-making, where its astringency had a similar effect to hops, but
this all hinges on the interpretation of an obscure Akkadian word.
A substitute in recreating these recipes might be a bitter herb like
rue, or a vegetable like bitter gourd.

e Abyssinian Field Kitchen

The bas-reliefs that celebrate the prowess of warrior kings and
huntsmen facing death and danger have little room for the comforts
of food and drink that must have been laid on by attendant servants
and slaves. The glimpse we have of an Abyssinian field kitchen in the
time of Ashurbanipal ii at Nineveh in 879 bc (page 27), where cooks
prepare food and drink, shows them cooking on well-ventilated
wood or charcoal, with an animal being cut up, and bread baked
in a portable oven.
The haute cuisine of palace and temple was something much more
complicated, as we can deduce from the lists of ingredients brought as
gifts and sacrifices for the gods. The household of the queen mother
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in Nineveh c. 700–8oo bc included, among the 1,600 personnel, at

least 300 cooks, and servants with auxiliary functions. There survives
a fragmentary record of an apprentice cook, Ina-qâti-Nabû-baltu,
put to learn his trade with one Riheti in 550 bc. He would need
phenomenal skills to perform the dual role of priest and cook
demanded for Adapa in the mid-2000 bc legend, where ‘The holy
priest, with immaculate hands, performs his rites with zeal among
the temple cooks, himself preparing every day the sacred table, the
sacred table that could never be served without him!’ Thirty-five

38
 recipes on a few fragmentary tablets lurking in a cupboard at Yale
are all we have to help imagine this rich and sumptuous cuisine,
and we are warned by the translator, Jean Bottéro, that the gaps
and incomprehensible words and the laconic nature of the texts
make for tentative reading. They can be linked to present day
Middle Eastern cookery, in all its varieties, and similar spice and
herb mixtures can be used, but there is no knowing what the words
suhutinnu, samidu, zurumu or kissimu could have meant. Some of
the recipes give a grammatical indication of two people at work,
perhaps the master cook and his apprentice.
An overall impression is of a sophisticated cuisine, with a variety
of seasonings, and some quite fancy procedures. A pigeon pie involves
the usual plucking and then plunging the birds into boiling water to
firm them up, after which they are rinsed in cold water, cleaned and
cooked in water and milk along with their intestines, liver and gizzards,
before being finished off by frying in fat with aromatic spices and
pounded leek, onion and garlic, and the mysterious samidu. Meanwhile
a pastry crust has been baked at the bottom of a serving dish, and the
cooked pigeons and their innards are laid on this, with more seasonings,
and some pre-cooked little bread or pastry morsels (like dumplings
maybe, to soak up the juices?) and served covered with a separately
cooked dome-like pastry lid. Almost 4,000 years later in seventeenth-
century England, Robert May was concocting similar ornate and
complicated pies, enclosed in a decorative lid, all the aromas and
flavourings brought together in a final blast of heat.
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39
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
 three

e Pleasures of Food
in Ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptians who could afford to eat well could also afford
to commemorate and evoke their food in tomb paintings, sculptured
memorials and everyday objects, many of which have survived. Food
was needed during the perilous journey to the afterlife, and enjoyed
thereafter, as were many of the good things of everyday existence.

Hunting in the Afterlife

In ancient Egypt the pleasures of hunting were less extreme than in
Abyssinia, a genteel activity for the comfortably off. The delight of
hunting waterfowl and fish in the afterlife was ensured for Nebamun, a
wealthy functionary who lived in Thebes in 1350 bc, a high-up official
in the grain and wine stores of the temple of the god Amun. His burial
chamber was decorated with images of all the good things he would
need on the journey to the next world, and all the pleasures he expected
to enjoy on his safe arrival. Achieving this was a terrifying mixture
of sacrifices to the gods and complicated procedures, as the various
papyrus, collectively called the Book of the Dead, seem to spell out.
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Although the image overleaf in the tomb of Nebamun’s family outing

on a skiff in the marshland might be full of references to the gods, with
the fish and bird symbols of rebirth and renewal, the down to earth
daily events are clear, a celebration of the pleasures of a wealthy civil
servant, to be enjoyed by him in this world and beyond, and by
Detail showing ducks, his friends and relatives who visit the tomb to remember him with
from a fresco in affection and hope for their own safe passage through the underworld.
Nebamun’s tomb,
Thebes (modern Hunting on the marshes was recreational, not for food, as
Luxor), c. 1350 bc. Nebamun’s larder was already well stocked and the banquet scene

41
 shows guests eating and drinking the profusion of good things piled
up before them. In the plashy marshland Nebamun, his wife
Hatshepsut and small daughter disport themselves on a narrow
papyrus skiff, gliding between clumps of water plants and reeds; he
stands astride, brandishing a throw-stick, surrounded by potential
prey, flapping and fluttering, grasping in the other hand some recently
captured egrets, while a tame decoy goose, sacred to the god Amun,
stands on the prow. The pet cat levitates towards a stricken duck while
clutching a pied wagtail and a shrike. Fur and feathers seem to fly,
butterflies flap around, the noise and movement echo off the burial
Nebamun fishing
chamber walls, and the marsh waters are awash with fish and plant life, and fowling with
including a puffer fish, tilapia and a mullet. Other tomb images show his family and pet
cat. From a fresco in
more prosaic ways of getting fish and fowl by netting or spearing, but his tomb-chapel in
here is the benign celebration of fertility and fecundity, of pleasure Thebes, c. 1350 bc.
and plenty, hunting as a sport for the rich and the happy.
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42
 Cattle being delivered But husbandry and agriculture provide a more prosaic source of
to Nebamun (and
recorded, by a scribe
food. Farming as well as hunting is celebrated in Nebamun’s tomb,
to the left), in a detail where a fine herd of cattle are being driven, with a confusion of legs
from the decoration
to Nebamun’s
and bodies, each animal a distinct personality, surging past the scribe
tomb-chapel. who notes the details, like his Mesopotamian counterpart, and being
welcomed by their owner.

e Fertile Nile and its Products

The Nile had none of the wilfulness of the Tigris or Euphrates. It was
Copyright © 2015. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.

benign, predictable and beneficent; its annual flooding, along with

controlled irrigation systems, enabled plentiful crops of edible plants
tended and used today as they were so long ago. Lettuce, onions, leeks
and garlic flourished. Herodotus said he had seen an inscription ‘of
Egyptian characters on the pyramid which records the quantities of
radishes, onions and garlic consumed by the labourers who constructed
it’. But no trace of this inscription remains. It seems a little odd that
the humble dietary requirements of workmen should have merited an
inscription.

43
make

generously

Fall by

nor and

North great it

leapt
yet the shores

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