How did the palace cooks use these items and what dishes did they prepare from them? That information was not provided by the host, King Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria, in the text engraved on a sandstone block (the banquet stele) that is currently on display at the Mosul Museum. However, other sources attest to the sophisticated and diversified cuisine that developed in the courts of the Assyrian Empire. The people of the time -- more precisely, the lucky ones who were born into the upper classes -- acquired a fondness for roasted, smoked and scorched flavors. But they were also familiar with more complex flavors that fermentation and pickling imparted to the raw materials; they liked food that was seasoned with abundant local and imported spices; and they enjoyed dishes in which, contrary to the modern Western kitchen, sweet and salty flavors were intermixed.
According to Ashurnasirpal, there were 69,574 guests in attendance at the inauguration banquet. "He exaggerated the numbers, of course," says Nurith Goshen, the curator of a new exhibition, "The Feast," at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and rolls her blue eyes. "How did they count them, exactly? Did they place someone with a clicker at the entrance? But what's important is the details of the invitees: senior officials from the renewed capital city, dignitaries from all across the empire, and representatives of neighboring states and powers. The names demarcate the boundaries of the known world and emphasize the response to the invitation as a symbol of Ashurnasirpal's power, notably his economic and organizational ability to host a magnificent feast lasting 10 days."
Most of the invitees didn't get to see the king with their own eyes, let alone dine in his presence. "The majority of the events were held outdoors, under the open sky, certainly large-scale events like this," Goshen says. "The whole city was a stage for the celebration, and the meals and events took place next to monumental structures like palaces and altars. When the structure itself stood as a metonym for the ruler and power, people weren't necessarily needed. We see it today, too, in the places people choose to hold demonstrations."
The very few who were privileged to dine inside the palace -- testimony to their high position -- did not join the king at his table in the way the modern imagination envisages. Instead, the king sat alone at a small personal table made from wood and decorated with ivory and precious stones -- not at a common banquet table like the Knights of the Round Table. Be that as it may, his guests shared with him the best of the best: dishes that were prepared from select, rare ingredients, expensive serving utensils including towels to wipe their hands while eating (cutlery didn't appear in the world until thousands of years later), and harp music that was more gentle than the noisemakers and drums that accompanied the mass events outside.
Goshen, a curator of archaeology of the Chalcolithic and Bronze ages, spent almost two years working on the impressive exhibition. "Food is only an excuse to come together," she says. "As it happened, 'The Feast' opened at a time when there is a plethora of exhibitions about food, both locally and internationally. But even though food is present in the exhibition, that is not its principal element. The theme is the political constellation behind such banquets.
"Like everyone," she continues, "I watch the news and every year I watch the intensive coverage of the Mimouna [a post-Passover festival celebrated by North African Jews]. The image that recurs every year is of the set table and the need to know who the guests are and who the hosts are. As an archaeologist, I can say that there is nothing new under the sun, that we have been familiar with these patterns of behavior for 5,000 years. The moment a complex society is formed -- with the appearance of writing, specialized professions, social classes and a population that is anchored in a central government -- banquets become a central tool of the rulers."
A feast, according to an accepted anthropological definition, is a meal shared by two or more people who consume foods and drinks that are extraordinary in quantity or quality in a ceremonious manner. "As differentiated from an everyday meal, which is connected to existential need, there is plenty of symbolism and ideology in a feast," Goshen says. "We are all present at feasts all the time -- the Shabbat evening meal is a feast, too -- but I chose to focus on feasts held by the people in power: the political and religious rulers. The exhibition, which covers thousands of years, includes archaeological objects from various Near Eastern cultures. However, they are not arranged chronologically or geographically, in part to underscore the fact that similar customs developed in all human societies."
Serving the 'world's VIPs'
The first section of four that comprise the exhibition, each of which occupies a separate space, is devoted to the feast's economy. "Everyone who has organized a wedding knows that you need a great deal of capital and resources to organize that lavish event," Goshen says. "In the ancient world it's easier to see the infrastructure this required: sheep and cattle breeders, slaughterers, cooks, wine stewards and experts to build the furniture and make the utensils.
"In the modern world it's ostensibly more veiled, but all these systems existed. On the other hand, just like in a modern wedding, the host expected to receive 'checks' in return. The banquets of the ancient world opened with processions of the invitees -- some arrived from afar, and the convoy stretched across day and night -- who brought gifts for the organizers."
The second section focuses on multi-participatory feasts, namely the mass banquets that were held outside, next to public structures. A procession bearing offerings -- a video work by the animators Ada Rimon and Ofeq Shemer, screened on a huge wall -- arrives at an altar that was discovered in Tel Sheva, near the city of Be'er Sheva. Behind it are animal bones, a small selection from some 17,000 bones that were found next to an altar that stood in the city of Hazor, a local power center during the Bronze Age. Still visible on some of the bones are marks of the knives that were used by slaughterers (a selection of such knives is exhibited next to them); others were broken by the guests to extract tasty marrow.
Displayed alongside utensils that were used for cooking and serving food are botano-archaeological finds -- fruit cores and kernels of grains and lentils -- that were found at different sites in the Land of Israel. There are local raw materials such as a carbonized fig and remnants of wheat grains and chickpeas, but also less typical pulses such as hilba (fenugreek) and a large Cyprus vetch. "The last two items were found in an excavation conducted near Beit Shemesh," Goshen says with palpable delight. "It pleases me deeply to think that at some point in the 14th century B.C.E., some Levantine king, who wasn't famous or especially important, was here and enjoyed delicacies that were served to the world's VIPs of the period."
The second part of the exhibition is connected to the third part, which features exclusive feasts that were held in centers of power, by a long banquet table with stacks of dishware -- abundance always generates visual power -- that were discovered at various sites in the Land of Israel. One of the most splendid sets of tableware was used by one of the kings of Hazor. "It's clear that there is tableware here for three groups of participants in the banquet," Goshen explains. "The tiny dishware was probably meant for the gods' [tiny] portion; the magnificent and fragile dishes -- and modern potters are also amazed at the skill that went into creating them -- were for the members of the elite; and the simple, everyday bowls were for the guests of the mass events. You don't use your finest tableware at a large-scale banquet. The workshop next to the palace makes you simple dishes, almost disposable in our terms."
On view in this part of the exhibition are some of the most precious and rare items, including a Mesopotamian cylinder seal that was found in the tomb of a noblewoman and depicts an ancient feast (on loan from the Louvre); gold and silver goblets (on loan from the British Museum); Persian tableware from around the time period of the feast of Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther; and also serving vessels and extraordinarily beautiful wineglasses that were found in Greater Syria and the Land of Israel. (The Canaanite kings drank wine in flat glasses that they held by the bottom.) Another interesting display consists of the strainers that were used to filter wine -- producers of natural wine, take note.
I know that some people are excited by victory arches and sarcophagi, but I am thrilled no less, perhaps even more, by plates, bowls and cups that were once held by people who walked about in the place where I live 3,000 or 5,000 years ago.
The most popular part of the exhibition, as indicated by the number of visitors and the buzz of mixed reactions, is the fourth one, which is devoted to present-day political banquets. In the large space are two video works by contemporary international artists (Hans Op de Beeck and Federico Solmi), along with a long banquet table that's aligned with the table heaped with dishes from thousands of years ago in the exhibition's third part. On the banquet table is the official tableware of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, along with a shoe-shaped dish designed by Tom Dixon in which the chef Moshe Segev served dessert to the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a dinner hosted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018.
"The shoe is the period at the end of the sentence," Goshen says. "It's part of an event that took place in Israel, the audience is familiar with it, and it's easy to discern a departure from diplomatic protocol in this episode -- because in Japanese culture, shoes are considered contemptible objects -- which occurred precisely because of a desire to heighten the hospitality experience. It's a deviation that can point to a mishap in the nonverbal messages that characterize political feasts."
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