BIBLE BABEL--EAT LIKE A BABYLONIAN

EAT LIKE A BABYLONIAN (posted 12 April 2011/updated 28 April 2011/updated 14 May 2011)

This essay will be discuss the health benefits of the Babylonian diet, but does not include precise recipes.  The best source for Babylonian recipes is the wonderful little book by Jean Bottero entitled The Oldest Cuisine in the World.  It appears that this page will be a work in progress.  As new information becomes available about the health benefits of foods common in the Babylonian diet, it will be posted here.

So why should we look to the Babylonian diet for health cues, didn’t everybody die by the age of 35 back then?

Not really.  There are many examples in Ancient History of individuals living to rather ripe old age—and remaining active up to the end.   The most famous one, of course, was Rameses II, Pharaoh of Egypt during the 13th century B.C.  Based on the information from his mummy, he was in his early nineties when he died and ruled for over six and a half decades.  Justinian’s general Narses reconquered Italy at the age of 90 during the 6th century A.D.   Liberius, another of Justinian’s generals reconquered Spain with a mere few hundred men—when in his late eighties.

It was not just the royalty and high classes that enjoyed a long life in the Ancient World.  The thousands of business and legal documents we have from ancient Babylon show hundreds of individuals (slaves, scribes, businessmen, etc.) who lived into their eighties and nineties and had professional careers spanning six or more decades.

LONGEVITY IN BABYLON

Topping them all in the longevity department was Adad Guppi, the mother of The Last King of Babylon www.lastkingofbabylon.com

She was the high priestess of the moon god Nanna-Suen (7th and 6th centuries B.C.).  Her Epitah claims that she lived to be 104, although some modern scholars believe her actual age at death was closer to a “mere” 102 (due to a discrepancy about her exact date of birth).

Her son Nabu Na’id didn’t too bad either since he was still leading troops in battle at the age of 80.  Unfortunately he lost to the Persians at that time so we don’t know how much longer he would have lived.  One of his predecessors, Nebuchadnezzar II (ruled from 605 to 562 B.C.) didn’t do too badly either.  Prior to his 43-year rule he served as commander-in-chief of his father Nabopolasser’s forces in a number of battles.  So, he must have been at least 30, possibly a lot more, at the time he ascended the throne, which would put his death in his mid-seventies (if not eighties or nineties).

Unfortunately, the idea has gotten hold in the modern west that everybody in “historical” times died early, that life expectancy was only 35 or 40 years.  During the late middle ages with the coming of the “little ice age” (which killed more people than did the “Black Death”) that may well have been true, but those early deaths were due to nutritional deficiencies (due in turn to a shorter growing season), and to severe weather (they didn’t have central heating in those days in medieval Europe--not even in the palaces and castles).

The book of Psalms (90:10) says that man’s allotted time for life on this earth is three score and ten years, or, if one is strong, four score years.  In other words, life expectancy in the Ancient Near East was about the same as it is today.  The Russian Assyriologist M.A. Dandamaev did an exhaustive study of the lengths of life of people in Babyolonia from the seventh to the fourth century B.C. using tens of thousands of business and administrative texts as his source material.  His conclusions verify that the average lifespan of people in that era was no different than it is now.  Undoubtedly, there were some exceedingly strong people such as Adad Guppi who exceeded those expectations.

Of course, the secrets for longevity in the modern world lie in the fact that we have supermarkets containing fruits and vegetables and sources of protein year around.  These things are available to us year around no matter where we live due to refrigeration and long distance trucking. We also have high-tech medical industries to (supposedly) repair any damage we (or aging) do to ourselves. 

But what advantages did the ancient Babylonians have for preventing aging without Botox, X-rays, MRIs, the AMA, FDA, and modern Pharmaceutical companies??

Before delving into the ancients’ secrets for longevity, we should first take a look at the major causes of death during Babylonian times.

PRIMARY CAUSES OF DEATH IN ANCIENT BABYLON

The number one cause of death for males during the entire iron age (which includes the time of the Neo-Babylonian Empire) was warfare.  Iron was much cheaper and easier to produce than was the bronze that it replaced, thus the introduction of iron weaponry near the end of the 2nd millennium B.C. touched off a huge arms race throughout the ancient world.  It made it possible for small states such as Syria, Judah, and Israel to field large, powerful forces.  The large states, such as Babylon responded with even larger armies, sometimes approaching a quarter of a million. 

The net result of this iron-age arms race was almost constant warfare.  Babylonian kings are recorded as engaging in a military campaign of one kind or another nearly ever year.  So, if a young man survived one campaign, law of averages were likely to catch up to him by the time he was forty.

Other causes of death in ancient Babylon included (for women) dying during childbirth, and for everyone else, dying from scorpion bites.  Babylon, being a hot and humid environment criss-crossed as it was by rivers and irrigation canals, was an ideal breeding ground for scorpions. 

However, if one survived the wars, child birth issues, and the scorpions, one had a good chance of living into one’s eighties or beyond and to die of natural old age.

So what were their dietary secrets for a long life?

DIETARY SECRETS

As for Adad Guppi, she claims to have led a very simple, almost mother Teresa type of life, avoiding rich food and drink, among other things.  The life-style of Caloric restriction that she practiced has been proven in a number of modern experiments with mice, to greatly extend life.

As for the general Babylonian populace their diet was totally devoid of many of the disease-causing “food” items we moderns consume:

For the Babylonians there were no sodas, no processed foods (except bread).  No genetically modified produce.  No high fructose corn syrup.  No artificial sweeteners.  No artificial anything.  Everything was “organic” and locally grown since they didn’t have long-distance trucking.  No plastic wraps on food, no plastic water containers.  No fluoride in the water.  No cancer-causing microwave ovens.

For meat they ate freshly caught fish, free range grass-fed beef, pork, cage-free chickens, and an occasional ostrich.  For dairy, they had milk (both cow and goat), cheese, and butter, and yoghurt—all of which were consumed only on occasion and mostly fresh because of a lack of refrigeration (although cheese, yoghurt, and even butter could be kept fresh longer than milk by storing in basement “cold” rooms, especially in the winter time).

They ate lots of eggs, seeds and nuts, and whole grains.  The foundation of their diet, for both rich and poor, was barley, which they preferred over the other grains (though they did make bread out of wheat).  They had good reason to do so.  Barley provides more complete protein for its weight than does beef, chicken, or fish.  It also provides all the known mineral and trace mineral elements as well as a balanced range of vitamins and hundreds of enzymes for digestion.  Barley was the primary food ration for the Babylonian army as it gave them the energy to march all day and the strength to fight and win--all on two meals a day.  The Babylonians even made their beer out of barley, making beer a "health" food.

Sweeteners (for use in deserts, yoghurt, and pomegranate juice, etc.) came mostly from date syrup and occasionally honey (for the well-off).  Both of these types of sweeteners are much more healthy than the white sugar and artificial sweeteners that dominate modern diets.  The honey, of course, was unprocessed—not like the nutritionally devoid stuff sold in our modern stores claiming to be honey. 

They had available to them a wide variety of fruits and vegetables during a long growing season.  A percentage of their fruits they dried so they could be saved for the off-season.

Pomegranates and pomegranate juice appears to have been one of their biggest favorites, so lets take a look at that fruit:

It is well-known that pomegranate juice is a powerful anti-oxidant.  During modern times it is marketed to reduce the risk of cancer, reduce “bad” cholesterol, and protects the arteries from clogging.  It seems that pomegranate juice also makes one physically stronger.  In a study reported in Robert Kennedy’s “MUSCLEMAG” (April 2011, pp. 135-136), the ingestion of pomegranate juice during a 15-day period increased the strength of weight-trained males and reduced the “day-after” muscle soreness.  The Baylock Wellness Report for May 2011 reported that one of the active ingredients in Pomegranates is Ellagic acid which has "strong anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant effects."  It also removes excess iron from the body's system, and excess iron has been linking to a wide variety of aliments including Alzheimer's as well as breast cancer and leukemia.  (Baylock, May, p. 7).

So, if one wants to live a long, productive life, retaining his or her strength and vitality into their eighties and nineties, then eat like a Babylonian.

www.lastkingofbabylon.com