Bappir: The Ancient Mesopotamian Brewer's Best Friend

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Experimental Pedagogies: Teaching through Experimental Archaeology Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bappir (Sumerian: "beer bread") was a ubiquitous ingredient in ancient Mesopotamian beer brewing for millennia. However, little is known about exactly what bappir was or how it was used. Nevertheless, the scant evidence available from contemporary texts, such as the second-millennium BCE "Hymn to Ninkasi," have led some researchers to interpret bappir as a dried sourdough loaf. Unknowingly or otherwise, ancient brewers used these loaves to inoculate their brews with the Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast) cells necessary for fermentation. Previous experimental archaeology has proved the plausibility of this interpretation, as carefully baked sourdough loaves can retain sufficient viable yeast cells to function as a starter for beer brewing. No data exists, however, on the "shelf-life" of bappir. To address this, experimental archaeology was employed to investigate the viability of yeast cells for beer production during prolonged dry storage in bappir loaves. Bappir loaves were prepared and stored for six months (26 weeks), with samples taken each week to test the yeast cell viability (survivability) and vitality (healthy activity). Understanding how long bappir can be stored while remaining viable for beer production can reveal insight into the frequency with which household brewers, typically women, were required to make these loaves.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Experimental Pedagogies: Teaching through Experimental Archaeology Part II

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40414.0