The world's oldest cuisine

The Oldest Cuisine in the World

Cuisine and the dining table are excellent ways to understand a civilization.

Through the study of gastronomy in ancient Mesopotamia, Jean Bottéro shows that eating and drinking are not minor subjects.

The discovery of three clay tablets dating from approximately 1700 BCE, detailing about forty recipes, allows us to reconstruct the meals prepared for the tables of the Greats of ancient Babylonia.

In addition to these concrete recipes, this analysis delves into dining rituals, the use of wine and beer, the status of cooks, the relationship between cuisine, life, and death, and the significance of cooking and dish presentation. By inventing gastronomy, Babylon also invented culture.

Jean Bottéro

A historian of the Bible and Assyriologist, he has written numerous works, notably La Plus Belle Histoire de Dieu (in collaboration) published by Seuil.