Divine beginnings of beer and bread

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

AMONG those translated from Sumerian documents is a poem with the English title, “A hymn to Ninkasi”. It is a poem describing the recipe for brewing beer, most probably with the intent to pass on a recipe for generations to come. The Hymn to Ninkasi is “the oldest record of a direct correlation between the importance of brewing, and the responsibility that women had with regard to supplying both bread and beer to the household. Ninkasi is female, and the fact that a female deity was invoked in prayer with regards to the production of brewed beverages illustrated the relationship between brewing and women as a domestic right and responsibility. The repetitive nature suggests that it was used as a tool in order to pass down information as a way of learning.”

The Sumerian documents also mentioned, that aside from beer, women supplied the bread in the household. Bread has also been documented in a “slab stele from mastaba tomb of Itjer at Giza. 4th Dynasty, 2543-2435 BC. Itjer is seated at a table with slices of bread, shown vertical by convention.”  This slab is displayed at the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy.

In ancient Roman religion, the Goddess of Bread Baking and Ovens was Fornax, whose festival, the Fornacalia, was celebrated on February 17 in Rome:

“When the Gods of Rome eat bread at their table, it is Fornax that made them. When they devour succulent cake, it is Fornax that baked them. When the very earth rumbles and mountains erupt in searing flame, it is Fornax’s ovens that burns. Baker of the Gods, Fornax bakes with fire and roasts as an artist would with paint and brush.

Though her cooking is Divine, the fires of her ovens still burns bread. She loses herself at the oven. None of the wondrous cakes, bread or cupcakes she crafts can ever fill the stomachs of mortal, but each one is worthy of a God.”

In modern times, the brewing of beer and breadmaking has been taken over systematically by big business and has lost much of its ancient art, rituals, mysticism and divine beginnings.

 

The Dough Rises

I heard silence in the oven of darkness
where heat is tempered
for the fungus to eat the sweet, slow,
so that microbes can grow,
for dough to leaven, and rise with its past
it can rise with the now, and glimpse a future,
needing nothing else, but a little salt
if fear can be set aside, for the unknown
and dare to unleaven, with what is given
and melt itself, totally, in the dark
there is no need for words, in the growing space,
and in the heat, where questions ferment like yeast
and answers grow with the risen bread
in the silence of darkness.

Note: The Dough Rises was translated into Arabic by Prof. Nizar Sartawi in World Association of Arab Translators & Linguists, Egypt, 01 October 2020.

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments