Ancient Sumerians Wrote a Hymn That Doubles as a Beer Recipe

Nearly 4,000 years ago, someone in ancient Mesopotamia sat down and wrote a poem about beer. But this wasn't just flowery praise for their favorite drink—it was a complete brewing manual disguised as religious verse.

The Hymn to Ninkasi, dating to around 1800 BCE, honors the Sumerian goddess of beer. And buried within its lines are step-by-step instructions for making the stuff.

Poetry You Can Drink

The hymn describes the entire brewing process: preparing bappir (a twice-baked barley bread), mixing it with water and date honey, and fermenting the mixture in large vats. The ancient brewers would then filter the beer through woven straws—which also served as drinking straws to avoid the chunky sediment.

Scholars have actually used these instructions to recreate Sumerian beer. The result? A cloudy, slightly sweet beverage with a lower alcohol content than modern beers.

Why Beer Mattered

To the Sumerians, beer wasn't just a recreational drink—it was:

• A daily staple safer than water (fermentation killed pathogens)
• Currency for paying workers
• A sacred offering to the gods
• A marker of civilization itself

The Epic of Gilgamesh describes the wild man Enkidu becoming civilized specifically by eating bread and drinking beer. That's how central brewing was to Mesopotamian identity.

Not Quite the Oldest Recipe

While often called "the oldest recipe," that title technically belongs to even older Sumerian tablets describing bread-making. But the Hymn to Ninkasi remains the oldest detailed beverage recipe we've ever found—and certainly the most poetic.

There's something wonderful about the fact that our ancestors considered beer important enough to immortalize in sacred verse. Four millennia later, we're still raising glasses to Ninkasi, whether we know her name or not.