Did you know Hammurabi and his Code of Law had law for beer production and sale?
The porridge thick Babylonian beer was staple
It is said that people of ancient Mesopotamia enjoyed beer so much that beer was literally a part of their staple diet. The Sumerians considered beer as a gift from gods for their wellness and happiness. They had different words for beer like sikaru , dida , ebir.
Ancient Babylonian literature, paintings and poetry depict that the beer was adored by Babylonians and their gods alike. Unlike beer in other civilisations, Babylonian beer was thick like a porridge, the Babylonians are known to have invented a special straw to consume this beer. The straw was crafted from a weed, for the affluent citizen, they were made of bronze or even gold.
Numerous clay plaques show that people used to socialise over a beer pot with straws
To the right here is an Old Babylonian Plaque depicting a Male and Female in the act of intercourse, the woman probably drinking beer from a jar with a very long straw. From southern Iraq. 1st half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul.jpg
The Alulu Beer receipt of the city of Ur
The women in Mesopotamia brewed beer as part of baking. Texts from ancient scriptures suggest that the Priestess of Ninkasi and every other Mesopotamian women brewed beer at home as part of their meal preparations.
They used Bappir (a twice baked barley bread) to ferment and brew the bear, they always associated brewing with baking. But however, it was not only confined in the household, by BCE 2050 beer was a commercial commodity, an Alulu beer receipt found from the ancient city of Ur is a proof to a good beer trade in Babylonia.
Mesopotamian Gods from the beginning and into Babylonia, beer was a common sacred thread connecting all
The famous poem "Inanna and the God of Wisdom" describes the two deities drinking beer together and the god of wisdom, Enki, getting so drunk that he gives away the sacred meh (laws of civilization) to Inanna (thought to symbolize the transfer of power from Eridu, the city of Enki, to Uruk, the city of Inanna, worshiped in later Sumerian Civilisations like Babylonia as Isthar).
The Sumerian poem Hymn to Ninkasi is both a song of praise to the goddess of beer, Ninkasi, and a recipe for beer, first written down around 1800 BCE.-
Reference - World History Org
Hammurabi regulated Beer trade
Ancient Babylon had at least twenty categories of beer, all of them had different characteristics. Beer was a regular commodity in their foreign trade.
Beer was so commercialised and regularly traded in the time of the great Babylonian ruler Hammurabi, that he laid in his Code of Hammurabi, some important law to regulate commercial beer and its trade.
Beer regulation law in Hammurabi's Code
108. If a tavern-keeper (feminine) does not accept corn according to gross weight in payment of drink, but takes money, and the price of the drink is less than that of the corn, she shall be convicted and thrown into the water.
109. If conspirators meet in the house of a tavern-keeper, and these conspirators are not captured and delivered to the court, the tavern-keeper shall be put to death.
110. If a "sister of a god" open a tavern, or enter a tavern to drink, then shall this woman be burned to death.
111. If an inn-keeper furnish sixty ka of usakani-drink to . . . she shall receive fifty ka of corn at the harvest.
Source - Avalon Project, Yale
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