A Hymn That Is Also a Recipe

The Hymn to Ninkasi is a Sumerian hymn to the goddess of beer that is at the same time, line by line, an account of the brewing of beer: it describes in order the soaking and preparing of the grain, the baking of the bappir bread used in brewing, the mixing and fermenting in the vat, and the filtering of the finished drink, all framed as the work of the goddess who presides over it. Preserved on clay tablets of the early second millennium BCE, it gives modern scholars a valuable insight into ancient Mesopotamian brewing while functioning as a hymn of praise to Ninkasi, whom it names as born of flowing water and set to satisfy the desire of the land. Beer was a staple of Mesopotamian life and diet, and its production, here divinised in the person of Ninkasi, was a matter of both daily importance and religious significance. The hymn's double character, praise and practical recipe interwoven, makes it one of the most engaging survivals of Sumerian religious literature.

Modern brewers and food historians have used the hymn's step by step description as a working recipe. In the early 1990s a team that included the brewer Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing collaborated with an Assyriologist to brew a beer following the hymn's instructions as closely as the ancient text allows, a widely reported experiment that tested the hymn against the practical chemistry of malting and fermentation. That the goddess's praise and the brewing instructions are inseparable in the text reflects a broader Mesopotamian pattern in which craft knowledge was preserved and transmitted as much through religious hymn as through anything resembling a technical manual.