Men and women have been singing hymns to their gods since the dawn of time, and likewise they have sung of things which are pleasant to think about such as fine days, romance, patriotism and so forth. But from the sands of Iraq, there has emerged a text which attempts to do both and is one of the oldest pieces of music we have in the west. This is the Hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of beer.
Ancient Sumeria was a civilization which emerged between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers some time after 7000 B.C.
By 5000 B.C. they had developed sophisticated temples, towns and palaces. The discovery of the wheel around 3500 B.C. made large scale trading possible and a prosperous civilization developed. Like most of the people of the ancient world, the Sumerians had a large number of gods, often tied to nature. Because beer has an intoxicating effect, and because it was tied to bread making, the Sumerians determined that beer had magical powers.
As for the beer itself, it was made from barley and other grains. The city states of Sumeria developed a great fondness for beer and it was consumed frequently in significant quantities. We know that they had dozens of varieties of beer, with names like “good beer,” “better beer,” “red beer,” ” yellow beer,” “honey beer” and of course “best beer.” Unfortunately, we do not know what any of these tasted like, although there have been many attempts to re-create them. Because of the famous hymn, we know how it was made, but it may very well have had an appearance of alcoholic porridge.
The Hymn to Ninkasi opens with an invocation of the goddess and enumerates her pedigree. We read that she was:
“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 walls for you,
Your father is Enki, Lord Nidimmud,
Your mother is Ninti, the queen of the sacred lake.
Ninkasi, your father is Enki, Lord Nidimmud,
Your mother is Ninti, the queen of the sacred lake.”
But as the hymn continues we see the process by which the beer was made, probably by women, who were associated with grain production. First Ninkasi mixes the dough for bread in a hole in the ground and uses a shovel for a utensil before baking it. She then spreads out more grain and malt, and waters it so that it sprouts, after which it is gathered and put in the fermenting tank, along with the broken up pieces of bread. Presumably they let the whole tank ferment, using either natural yeast or adding an amount of rising dough to catch its yeast.
We then read:
“You place appropriately on a large collector vat.
Ninkasi, the filtering vat, which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on a large collector vat.
When you pour out the filtered beer of the collector vat,
It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.”
The goddess then filters out the fermented liquid for consumption. The whole process was probably about five days to a week.
The hymn was set down in clay tablets around 1800 B.C., but the vocabulary and grammar suggest a far earlier date. But why have a hymn to the beer goddess at all? Writing was developed in Sumeria about 3200 B.C., but for a long time afterwards the majority of the population was still illiterate.
With the use of music, the brewers could easily remember the process and not leave out steps. Evidence found in old broken pottery beer vats suggests they made a great deal of the stuff and flavored it with things like dates, pomegranates, and honey. They did not flavor it with hops for that venerable plant was not identified until Roman times and not cultivated as an herb until the Middle Ages. It did not even reach England until the Dutch imported it around 1400 A.D. The Germans used hops as a flavoring ingredient because the hop could not be taxed by the Catholic Church, making it a cherished taste by the first Lutherans.
It is worth remembering that the waters of antiquity were not always as clean as water is today. But for some reason the beer did not appear to make the drinkers sick, unless, of course, they drank too much. But the presence of alcohol in the grog probably killed off a lot of germs, although the powers of the goddess probably got the credit for making it safe to drink. The Sumerians also knew of wine, but evidence suggests that this more potent drink was long reserved for the ruling classes. The tipple of the masses of ordinary laborers remained beer, as it is in many places today.
The Sumerians were not alone in their love of beer. The Egyptians made a great deal of beer for consumption, it was used in religious rituals and even buried in the tombs of dead kings to take with them into the afterlife. Across the Mediterranean Sea, ancient Greeks and Romans regarded beer as the drink of barbarians. These cultures actually watered down their wine to avoid getting intoxicated, or at least not too quickly. In Mesopotamia, watering down beer was a criminal offense and could have severe punishments. This last rule was one as just and wise as Hammurabi himself.
Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a professor emeritus of history and humanities at Moreno Valley College and a Roman Catholic priest.
Write to him at Professing Faith, P.O. Box 8102, Redlands, CA 92375-1302, email him at gnyssa@verizon.net or follow him on Twitter @Fatherelder.
