Table of Gods

Letter sent to King Sargon II

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Table of Gods

There are sources that claim the Assyrians made layered pastries with nuts and honey as early as 3,000 years ago. So could the ancient Assyrians have made something that resembled baklava—and if so, what would it have looked and tasted like?

To start with, the ancient Assyrians were obsessed with baking. In every Assyrian city there were hundreds of temple bakers who were well paid to bake bread and pastries for the gods. People in Assyria believed they were created by the gods to serve them food and drink four times daily. If the gods were satisfied with their offerings, they would protect the people from famine, wars, and demons. Cooking or baking for the gods was therefore a matter of life and death.

Now, imagine entire societies built on this belief. No wonder the first culinary schools started in ancient Mesopotamia, ensuring only the best cooks were sent to temples and palaces. In the House of the Queen in Nineveh alone, 1,300 kitchen workers were employed. And in the city of Ashur, a special baking agency staffed with 50 bakers made sure the Assyrian gods received 400 loaves of bread daily.

The resources spent on satisfying the gods with food were significant, so there should be no question about just how skilled the best bakers in Assyria were. But one limitation they had 3,000 years ago was ingredients.

Obviously, the Assyrians wouldn’t have used white sugar, but honey was freely available, and so were walnuts and pistachios. Bread wheat, today known as all-purpose flour, was also cultivated and used by the Assyrians. So making thin, stretchable layers of dough was perfectly possible.

But as you’ve probably noticed, this pastry is red. That’s because in Assyria, red was associated with divinity and believed to ward off hostile forces. Few would’ve been able to make a pastry like this in ancient Assyria. Not only because the ingredients were expensive, but also because they would need access to a dome oven which was mostly present in temples. 

So if a baklava-like pastry was ever made in the Assyrian Empire, it would have been offered to the gods.

Visit tableofgods.com/baklava to get the recipe!

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Here are some recipe testers cooking an ancient soup recipe from the city of Mari, ca. 1800 BC. The recipe calls for one large egg, and while you know I mean a chicken egg, the chefs of Mari would have thought of an ostrich egg.

If you come across an ostrich egg and want to use it, scale everything by a factor of twenty—that’s how much larger it is compared to a chicken egg. Also, don’t throw away the shell. Artisans in Mari used ostrich egg shells to make art objects.

Visit tableofgods.com/soup to get the recipe!

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Visiting some of the best art book printers and paper mills in Italy. Only 3 month left until pre-orders open! Excited, nervous, and more nervous 😃 To join 108,000 people on the waitlist, visit tableofgods.com/yt

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