(or Bitches and Beer BCE)
The oldest "recipe" for beer that we know of is in the "Hymn to Ninkasi".
"Born of the flowing water...tenderly cared for by the Ninhursag...Your father is Enki, Lord Nudimmud (Creator of Man), your mother is Ninti, the queen of the sacred lake...You are the one who handles the dough [and] with a big shovel, mixing in a pit, the bappir with sweet aromatics...with [date]-honey...the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven...you are the one who...puts in order the piles of hulled grains...who waters the malt set on the ground... The noble dogs keep away even the potentates... You are the one who soaks the malt in a jar... The waves rise, the waves fall...the one who holds with both hands the great, sweet wort, brewing [it] with honey [and] wine... The filtering vat, which makes a pleasant sound, you place appropriately on [top of] a large collector vat... When you pour out the filtered beer of the collector vat, it is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates..."
The recipe is elicited through the poetry rather than explicitly laid out as a step-by-step for the would be brewmaster wannabes of the college world.
The Sumerian word for “beer” is KAŠ (written 𒁉 and 𒆜) =
The Akkadian word “šikaru” used the same written symbols 𒁉 and 𒆜 as an orthographic borrowing.
One of the principal ingredients of beer and fermentation is some kind of sweet syrup, usually honey, or sugar of some kind, as an agent that kickstarts the fermentation process or as a finishing touch to add sweetness to offset a nutty or vinegary flavor. As such, I wonder if beer-making and the ancient word for "beer" was where the word “sugar” originated.
Observe the linguistic trail out of the Ancient Near East throughout the world in the following words for "sugar":
French: sukere
Galician: chuchar, suchar, zugar
Spanish: azucar
Italian: zucchero
Romanian: suge “to suck”
Bosnian: šećer “sugar”
Serbo-Croat: шећер (šećer)
Russian: sakhar (сахар) “sugar”
Albanian: sheqer
Greek: záchari (ζάχαρη)
Latin: sugere
Vulgar Latin: sucāre
Sanskrit: sukha (सुख) “happy, liking, pleasure”
Sanskrit: zarkara (शर्कर) “sugar”
Proto-Indo-European (PIE): *sewH- (“to give birth”) + ka = “bitch”/“suckling (!) female dog”
Persian: shakar (شكر)
Hebrew: sukar (סוכר)
Arabic: sukkar (سكر)
There appear to be Austronesian / Polynesian branches:
Malay: sukar, sakar, sagar “sugar”
Sāmoan: SUA “juice or liquid of any kind” (probably originally SUKA / SU’A)
Hawaiian: HUA “froth”
Māori: HUKA “foam, frost, snow, cold”
Marquesan: UKA “FERMENTED”
ŠUA = ŠUGA—
Also, while there is no attested form for the following combination of cuneiform as related to sugar or beer, a reconstruction as ŠUG-A / ŠU₄-A (𒌋𒀀) still makes sense:
ŠU₄ (ŠUG) (𒌋) "to stand" (alternative of verb SUG₂ (𒁻) in plural form of GUB (𒁺) "to stand" [the antecedent of 𒌋 comes from giguru (𒄀𒄥𒀀), literally GI (𒄀) "reed" + GUR (𒄥) "to turn" + A (𒀀), altogether meaning: “reed stylus turned around” = “a straw” = ŠU₄ 𒌋 the imprint of “edge” or “rim” of the reversed stylus).
A (𒀀) "water"
...Reversed reeds for water...
The reed stylus is an important detail as Sumerians used aquatic reeds for many purposes--writing on clay tablets, building pillars for house and wall construction, and most importantly as straws for sipping beer.
Sumerians would sit round a common vat of beer while the tavern maiden (a kind of priestess in some scenes) would pour libations into the vat.
It’s a visual analog of people sitting around a common source of liquid happiness and sipping through straws the gift of a female goddess.
The people are pups.
The straws are teats.
The jar of beer is the bitch.
The beer is the “sweet, sugary” nectar of the goddess, her intoxicating breast milk.
In this view, the role of beer in a ritual sense really recasts the original tavern maiden / brew mistress as more of a priestess and taverns as temples / tabernacle (taberna = “tavern” = temple).
Maybe beer was the original “water of life.” Makes sense since KAŠ (𒆜) is also a major component in KASKAR (𒆜) “way, road; journey”.
Then there is Old Babylonian ŠU KAR (𒋗𒋼𒀀) “to spare”… as in “to have mercy”, “to allow a remnant”.
Malay: sukar, sakar, sagar “sugar”
Sāmoan: SUA “juice or liquid of any kind” (probably originally SUKA / SU’A)
Hawaiian: HUA “froth”
Māori: HUKA “foam, frost, snow, cold”
The Marquesan word UKA has a clear genetic relationship with the Samoan word complex of SU / SUA, probably a corrupted form of SUKA, and Marquesan retained the meaning of “FERMENTED” throughout all of the phonetic drifts.
All the Samoan words constructed around SU link to liquids, communal drinking, merriment, relaxed speech-making, milk, teats, sacred circles of titled chiefs, etc. These are all attributes of ritual beverages and libations, as well as elite celebrations.
The Māori links to “sugar” and “snow” in HUKA are obviously due to their visual analogues. Interesting that HUKA elicits a vision of people sitting round a vat to smoke flavored tobacco in a similar fashion as beer-drinking Sumerians and milk-sucking puppies around their bitch.
Sugar plays an important role in the fermentation of beer, speeding up the rate of fermentation and kick-starts the creation of carbon dioxide gas by yeast, so finding rotation in semantic values among linguistic cognates addressing the white, powdery appearance of sugar and snow is expected.
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