Ancient Mesopotamian Bar Tabs

[3113]

Time for your history lesson, children! This one comes from Mesopotamia:

http://www.intenselycurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/meso011-150x150.gif

From here:

A trove of newly translated texts from the ancient Middle East are revealing accounts of war, the building of pyramidlike structures called ziggurats and even the people's use of beer tabs at local taverns....[regarding bar tabs] you should pay a "female tavern-keeper" who gives you a jar of beer.

Apparently, if you have the female keeper put the beer on your tab during the summer, she will have the right to extract a tax from you, of unknown amount, in winter. "If a female tavern-keeper gives [in] summer one beer-jar to someone on credit its nigdiri-tax will be [...] in win[ter]..." (Translation by Miguel Civil) The lesson? If you live in ancient Mesopotamia don't put the beer on your tab.

What if the tavern keeper is male?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/British_Museum_Queen_of_the_Night.jpg/350px-British_Museum_Queen_of_the_Night.jpg

 

[voluptuary_manque]

You ask the male tavern keeper to put the beer jar on your tab and he breaks it over your head?

 

[ishtat]

Time for your history lesson, children! This one comes from Mesopotamia:

http://www.intenselycurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/meso011-150x150.gif

From here:


What if the tavern keeper is male?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/British_Museum_Queen_of_the_Night.jpg/350px-British_Museum_Queen_of_the_Night.jpg

Your illustration is of Ishtar, the Goddess of sexuality, Babylonian successor of Sumerian Innana, also known in other places as Astarte and Aphrodite. Perhaps an appropriate goddess for this site.

Incidentally En-hed-u-anna's songs or hymns to Innanna are the oldest imaginary writings for which the author is known (2285 BC) She wrote on the first tablet. "My King, this which has been created (her writing) no -one has created before."

Smart lady and the first author ever.

 

[3113]

Your illustration is of Ishtar, the Goddess of sexuality, Babylonian successor of Sumerian Innana, also known in other places as Astarte and Aphrodite. Perhaps an appropriate goddess for this site.

Well, I figured if she was at all representative of female bartenders back then it might explain a few things Maybe men deliberately didn't pay for beers but, rather, put them on a tab in hopes that, come winter, female innkeepers would come knocking at their doors demanding that "unknown amount" to settle the account.

Plot bunny any one?

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Shows that Sumerians weren't as chauvinistic as some other ancient civilizations.