“The stories of the ancient Middle East have generally been told through Western voices. Who you don’t hear are the voices of local people.”
Owning the Past (ملكية من بلاد الرافدين الى العراق ) is a dual language exhibition highlighting the long-lasting impact of the past on the present. It explores how the borders of the state of Iraq were established following the First World War when British control of the region included a fascination with its ancient past - one that led to a colonisation of Mesopotamian antiquity as much as the living communities. It questions what is meant by heritage and introduces voices and stories of people not previously visible in displays devoted to the very histories and heritage of their homelands.
In this film, we hear from some of those involved in the creation of the exhibition: Community Ambassadors Nuha Abdo and Mustafa Barcho; Community Engagement Officer Nicola Bird; Exhibition co-curators Paul Collins and Myfanwy Lloyd; and Artist Piers Secunda.
It’s been a whole year since I started this project, and seeing it grow to the size it is today is amazing - I never imagined that it would ever get this popular! So to celebrate, I decided to take a look at some roast duck - based on some Sumerian cuneiform fragments.
In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!
1 - Prepare the Duck To begin making this roast duck, we need to prepare our duck. I’m using a whole bird here, but you could just as easily cook this in pieces - it’s up to you! Start by scoring the breast with a knife a few times, to increase the seasoning surface area. The original fragment claims to be dealing with an unnamed bird, so I opted for duck - as wildfowl would have been a staple for Mesopotamia. But chicken or squab would have also been eaten around this time.
In any case, season your bird of choice using some salt, some freshly ground black pepper, some ground cumin, and some ground coriander. Rub this into the meat with your hands if you can handle it. Though I’m going to be dry-roasting this, it’s likely that the meat would have been boiled in a stew or soup broth for a while before being roasted in an oven.
2 - Roast the Duck Place your seasoned bird breast-side down on a roasting rack. And then place this into the centre of an oven preheated to 200C / 400F for about two hours (based on a 2kg bird of course), flipping this over about 30 minutes before serving so the breast meat roasts perfectly. When you’ve flipped the bird, go and prepare your soup.
3 - Prepare the Soup To pair with this, I made a quick and easy leek and herb soup. Start by chopping a leek into segments as thick as your thumb or so. Also chop an onion in half, and mince each half.
Toss some butter into a pot and put it onto a high heat. When the butter melts, toss in your leeks and onions. Return the pot to the heat, and let everything sauté away for a few minutes until the onion turns soft and translucent. At this point, toss in a few shakes of cumin and coriander, along with 750ml of water (or a soup stock of your choice). Into this, add some thyme and mint sprigs.
Let everything cook away for about 20 minutes, or until the leeks are practically falling apart.
Fish out your herb sprigs, and serve up alongside your duck!
The finished roast is super succulent, and very flavourful. The seasoning on the duck gave it a sharp zesty flavour, which paired very nicely with the herby, minty flavour of the soup. The meat itself has a lovely crisp skin, and tender flesh. This is a reconstruction of a fragmentary recipe from the Yale Cuneiform collection - others have postulated that it is separate to the pigeon stew recipe fragment, while others have claimed it to be a continuation of it. I chose to do a simple roast here, as ovens for cooking and baking would have been able to do this with little modification in antiquity (such as the use of a spit or shaft of metal or wood to cook the meat over a naked flame.
This week, I’m recreating some Akkadian Kukku - or “butter-cakes” - which would have been offered to deities, much like the qullupu I made a while ago, which were used in the worship of Inanna! However this dish seems to have been eaten by Akkadian rulers, rather than offered to deities.
In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!
Ingredients
1 cup flour
½ cup hazelnuts
½ cup walnuts
1/3 cup honey
½ cup butter
½ cup raisins (or sultanas)
1 egg
dates (for decoration)
Method
1 - Grind the Nuts
To begin with, we need to crush our hazelnuts and walnuts in a mortar and pestle until they take on a sandy consistency. I left a few chunks in my batch - as you can see here - but I cannot recommend you do this, as it makes it rather difficult to take out of your baking tin later on! So, do as I say, not as I do in this case.
In any case, hazelnuts and walnuts would have been cultivated in this region in the Bronze Age, and were used frequently in the civilisations cuisines too!
Place this into a bowl for later, while you cream your butter and honey
2 - Cream the Butter, Mix the Ingredients
Place ¼ of a cup of butter into a large mixing bowl, and pour 1/3 of a cup of honey on top of this. Using a wooden spoon, mash this together until it takes on a smooth, creamy texture.
At this point, pour in your crushed walnuts and hazelnuts, a half a cup of raisins, and a single egg. Also toss in a cup’s worth of flour. Mix all of this together until it forms a wet dough. If it’s looking a little dry as you’re mixing it, you can add a little milk to the mix to bring it together - but no more than a quarter of a cup! You’ll wind up with something that’s more like a batter than a dough.
3 - Prepare Tin and Bake
When your dough is done, butter up a baking tin, and scoop in your dough. Smooth down the top a little, before sticking some dates on top of this. There’s no real pattern to replicate, so scatter them as organised or chaotically as you want!
Place your dough into the centre of an oven preheated to 130C / 275F for half an hour, or until the kukku takes on a lovely golden complexion.
Leave the pan to cool before you take your bake out of the tin - this will help it retain its integrity.
The finished dish is really soft and light, and has a lot of similarities to the Palace Cake from Ur I recreated a few months ago. These cakes are delicious if you drizzle honey over the tops of them before you eat them, so the dough gets imbued with sweet honey goodness.
The Babylonian origin goddess Tiamat as depicted by Carolyn Scrace in Gerald Legg’s X-Ray Picture Book of Incredible Creatures. Her scale and configuration here puts me in mind of a GMO or even Mythos biosphere-seeding machine, a kind of monstrous Last Universal Common Ancestor.
~ Bull’s head ornament for a lyre. Period: Early Dynastic III Date: ca. 2600–2350 B.C. Place of origin: Mesopotamia Culture: Sumerian Medium: Bronze, inlaid with shell and lapis lazuli.
Neo-Assyrian stamp seals depicting a dog (top) and the goddess Gula on her throne resting on a dog with an attendant. Circa 700-600 B.C. Now in the British Museum.
Gula was the Assyrian goddess of healing and the dog was her attribute. It was believed that if you neglected or harmed your dog then that would incur the goddess’ wrath.
The Bull-Headed Lyre of Ur, the world’s oldest surviving stringed instrument, dating back to ancient Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic III Period (2550–2450 BCE). University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, PA.
Enheduanna is the world’s earliest known author. A woman who wielded incredible power and authority, her legacy has stretched over time longer than she likely ever anticipated.
BASIC BIO: (c. 2300 BC) Enheduanna was the daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, and appointed by him to be the high priestess of the goddess Inanna and god Nanna in the Sumerian city of Ur. This politically-motivated move (he knew she’d be good for unity in the kingdom) exposed Enheduanna to great power, and she was essentially responsible for Sumer’s entire spiritual system. In her capacity as priestess, she composed a number of poems and hymns, not only in devotion to her gods, but also in reference to herself. She is, to date, the first example of an artist who signed her work.
HER IMPACT: Enheduanna continues to be celebrated around the world for not only her writings, but for the social and political significance of her role as high priestess. Her writings are available to read online, and offer an interesting insight into the education and literacy of women in Sumerian culture. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos series dedicates some time to her, and she is the subject of many modern feminist debates. Perhaps my favorite thing about Enheduanna is that what we know about her is informed largely by what she wrote about herself - it’s not the most unbiased portrait, but I love that she herself was allowed to create it.
Hi there, this is Lilith and I wanted to say something… We got a message and I cannot recall if I answered it or not. I cannot find it anymore. The message asked how old we are…. It’s been awhile so I had to see our archive posts.
I got busy and was not able to answer properly, then I forgot.
Coincidentally, as I looked, we were founded on February 5th, 2015. We’re five years old now! Happy Belated to us!
Anyway, hope you have it good out there! Thanks for your support over the years! - L.
Phoenician depiction of a sphinx made of ivory. Depictions of them were not solely restricted to Egypt. From Fort Shalmaneser in northern Iraq, circa 900-700 B.C. Now in the British Museum.
An individual named Assur-sumu-iddina responding to a certain Summu-Assur. It appears Assur-sumu-iddina did not respond to Summu-Assur’s initial letter. The reason–or possibly excuse–is that Sumu-usur was supposed to give Assur-sumu-iddina the letter. Instead, a nameless man, possibly the courier, didn’t give the letter either and ran away.
Either way, another example of people in ancient world not replying to each other. Source: Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars by Simo Parpola.
When an extreme drought caused a 3,400-year-old city to reemerge from a reservoir on the Tigris River in northern Iraq, archaeologists raced to excavate it before the water returned.
The Bronze Age city, at an archaeological site called Kemune, is a relic of the Mittani Empire (also spelled Mitanni Empire), an ancient kingdom that ruled parts of northern Mesopotamia from around 1500 B.C. to 1350 B.C. Researchers have long known of the remains of the city, but they can only investigate them during droughts.
Archaeologists partly excavated Kemune in 2018 and discovered a lost palace with 22-foot-high (7 meters) walls and chambers decorated in painted murals, Live Science previously reported. This time, researchers mapped most of the city, including an industrial complex and a multistory storage facility that likely held goods from all over the region, according to a statementreleased by the University of Tübingen in Germany. Read more.
Gilgamesh & Enkidu, done for the “Classics, but make it gay” zine. Thank you to the mods for letting me stray from the prompt a bit and paint some ancient mythological boyfriends :)
Inscribed cylinder with text describing the building activities of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon Neo-Babylonian ca. 604–562 B.C. Mesopotamia, Sippar (modern Tell Abu Habba) Babylonian Clay
