5,000-year-old tavern and "beer recipe" on tablet uncovered in Iraq

Archeologists from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pisa uncovered the remains of a 5,000-year-old tavern in southern Iraq, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The excavations, completed in November 2022, were carried out in Lagash, northeast of the modern city of Nasiriyah, well known to be one of the first urban centers of the Sumerian civilization of ancient Iraq.

The finding led to a treasure trove of primitive furniture, ranging from a refrigeration system, a large oven, and benches for dinners to around 150 serving bowls replete with fish and animal bones. The archeologists also found several pieces of evidence of drinking, which was rather popular among Sumerians.

"So we've got the refrigerator, we've got the hundreds of vessels ready to be served, benches where people would sit... and behind the refrigerator is an oven that would have been used... for cooking food," project director Holly Pittman told AFP.

"We call it a tavern because beer is by far the most common drink, even more than water, for the Sumerians," she said, noting that in one of the temples excavated in the area, "there was a beer recipe that was found on a cuneiform tablet".

The discovery sheds light on the lives of ordinary people

The world's first cities developed in what is now southern Iraq, and the Lagash area, which is close to the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, was even dubbed the "garden of the gods" for its fertility. It gave rise to a host of Sumerian cities dating back to the early dynastic period.

"Lagash was one of the important cities of southern Iraq," Iraqi archaeologist Baker Azab Wali told AFP after working with the U.S.-Italian team on the site.

"Its inhabitants depended on agriculture, livestock, fishing, but also on the exchange of goods," he said.

The team was intrigued to find out about the occupations of the people who used the tavern around 2700 B.C. - this could shed light on the social structure of the first cities and the inhabitants' lives.

"There is so much that we do not know about this early period of the emergence of cities, and that is what we are investigating. We hope to be able to characterize the neighborhoods and the kinds of occupation... of the people that lived in this big city who were not the elite," Pittman said.

Usually, work done at the other sites focuses primarily on kings and priests. "And that is all very important, but the regular people are also important," she added.