Brewed brilliance: the surprising role of beer in the rise of Sumerian society

A Hymn of Ninkasi written in Sumerian cuneiform. ( Photo: Cuneiform Digital Library)

31 Mar 2025

The oldest reference in the first known writing — cuneiform — was not about gods or kings, but about beer. Lots of it. It was signed by a brewer.

In the dusty lowlands of ancient Mesopotamia, between the winding rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates in what is now Iraq, Sumerian civilisation rose, not only on the back of agriculture, but perhaps more curiously, on the back of beer.

Sumerian beer — more like cloudy porridge than today’s ale — was a cultural mainstay, an economic good, a form of payment and a spiritual offering. How we know this comes from clay tablets inscribed with one of humanity’s earliest writing systems: cuneiform. And what they tell us is that the ancients drank brew in large quantities.

The oldest cuneiform tablet ever found, from the ruined city of Uruk, was a 3,350-year-old purchase order from a brewer named Kushim for 29,086 litres of barley for the distilling of nine types of beer. We’re talking industrial-scale production.

Through cuneiform inscriptions on administrative documents, literary hymns and lexical lists, a fragmented yet fascinating picture of brewing technology emerges — one shaped by the interplay of practical activity, ritual and bureaucratic requirements.

The documentation of Sumerian beer transactions became integral to the story of how written language helped record, organise and refine early technological knowledge.

Darius the Great at work on a clay tablet. (Photo: Sketchy)

A Sumarian tablet depicting the drinking of beer. (Photo: Cuneiform Digital Library)

An example of cuneiform. (Photo: Cuneiform Digital Library)

Hundreds of clay tablets contain detailed records of the required raw materials, the amounts of beer produced and of economic transactions such as the delivery of raw materials and the disbursement of beer products.

Through the triangular grooves of cuneiform tablets, we glimpse a civilisation grappling with standardisation, record-keeping and production, issues that would shape economies ever after. They speak of a people in love with beer.

Cracking cuneiform

Cuneiform is not a language but a form of writing used from before 3,000 BC by many languages including Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Elamite, Hittite and Old Persian. It is named for its wedge-shaped marks (Latin cuneus = wedge), impressed into clay tablets with a stylus. As ancient scripts go, it was damnably difficult to decipher.

There were partial breakthroughs on the names of ancient rulers like Darius and Xerxes by various archaeologists, but the real ah-ha moment came when a massive trilingual inscription was found in Iran carved high on a cliff by the scribes of Darius the Great.

A British army officer, Henry Rawlinson, used pulleys to lift agile young men to view and write down what they saw piece by piece. It became known as the Behistun Inscription and, with three scripts praising Darius’ 19 successful battles written in Akkadian, Ekamite and Old Persian, it became possible to cross-reference the meaning.

It was a game-changer, opening the door to deciphering one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries in the Near East, the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh.

It was burned down during a siege in about 612BC, but the fire baked and hardened the 30,000 to 40,000 clay tablets it contained, preserving them. This is being digitised by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, a huge pathway into the historical traditions of the ancient Middle East.

The dots record numbers of dry grain products used. (Photo: Cuneiform Digital Library)

What it tells us is that Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia was socially stratified in large cities with complex civilisation and centralised governments.

The most powerful cities, like Umma, Ur and Girsu, were city-states with control over the local area ruled by local governors, and eventually by secular kings with control of multiple city-states. Each was dedicated to a patron deity and characterised by a central ziggurat or temple complex. In typical human tradition, they waged wars against each other.

The love of beer

Now about the beer.

Research suggests that the technique of brewing long predates the advent of the Sumerians in the lowlands of Mesopotamia’s alluvial plane. It has been proposed that it was the discovery of the intoxicating effect of the alcohol in beer, rather than the use of grain for food, that kicked off the transition from hunting and gathering to living in stable settlements and cultivating the soil.

If you click “beer” in the Cuneiform Digital Library, no less than 1,629 mentions appear. Much of it is pretty mundane, dealing with the ordering and delivery of beer alongside bread, onions, oil and flour.

Beer appears to have also been given as rations to workers in precisely measured portions linked to their level of labour. One tablet from the city of Umma listed 30 “female beer-pouring days”, and there are images of women serving beer from buckets.

What’s clear is that the manufacture and distribution of beer was seen as so important that it was subjected to the centralised economy of all Sumerian states. Every step of the process had to be under central government control and minutely documented by scribes.

These texts are more than just grocery lists or praise songs. They are windows into how the Sumerians understood materials, processes and value. Their ambiguity and variation reflect a world that was still defining itself: linguistically, technologically and culturally.

This is a detailed beer distribution invoice, probably tied to temple or state provisioning, which records individuals and roles, the type and amount of beer given (mostly one to three units per entry) and other information like the messengers instructed to deliver it. (Photo: Cuneiform Digital Library)

At least nine different types of beer are mentioned, and its production was regulated down to instructions on the importance of hand washing during fermenting and serving.

The actual brewing techniques have yet to be discovered among the thousands of tablets. A hint of the process, however, was discovered in a text dated around 1,800 BC.

The Hymn of Ninkasi written in Sumerian cuneiform. ( Photo: Cuneiform Digital Library)

It was written in Sumerian using cuneiform script and is known as the Hymn of Ninkasi. The words are presumed to have been sung as entertainment, and it is the oldest known text describing the brewing of beer. The hymn honours the Goddess of Beer and goes like this:

Borne of the flowing water,
Tenderly cared for by the Ninhursag,
Borne of the flowing water,
Tenderly cared for by the Ninhursag,

Having founded your town by the sacred lake,
She finished its great walls for you,
Ninkasi, having founded your town by the sacred lake,
She finished its walls for you,

Your father is Enki, Lord Nidimmud,
Your mother is Ninti, the queen of the sacred lake.
Ninkasi, your father is Enki, Lord Nidimmud,
Your mother is Ninti, the queen of the sacred lake.

You are the one who handles the dough (and) with a big shovel,
Mixing in a pit, the bappir with sweet aromatics,
Ninkasi, you are the one who handles the dough (and) with a big shovel,
Mixing in a pit, the bappir with (date) — honey,

You are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,
Ninkasi, you are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,

You are the one who waters the malt set on the ground,
The noble dogs keep away even the potentates,
Ninkasi, you are the one who waters the malt set on the ground,
The noble dogs keep away even the potentates,

You are the one who soaks the malt in a jar,
The waves rise, the waves fall.
Ninkasi, you are the one who soaks the malt in a jar,
The waves rise, the waves fall.

You are the one who spreads the cooked mash on large reed mats,
Coolness overcomes,
Ninkasi, you are the one who spreads the cooked mash on large reed mats,
Coolness overcomes,

You are the one who holds with both hands the great sweet wort,
Brewing (it) with honey (and) wine
(You the sweet wort to the vessel)
Ninkasi, (...)(You the sweet wort to the vessel)

The filtering vat, which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on a large collector vat.
Ninkasi, the filtering vat, which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on a large collector vat.

When you pour out the filtered beer of the collector vat,
It is (like) the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.
Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the filtered beer of the collector vat,
It is (like]) the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates. DM

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Cracking cuneiform

The love of beer