I was lying on the couch. Neck bent 90 degrees. Laptop on my chest. Eyes blinking fast. My wife and 6-month-old son were asleep. I was browsing books online when a title suddenly grabbed my attention: The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia. I jumped up from my couch potato position.
In the 1980s, Assyriologist Jean Bottéro had deciphered three clay tablets from Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), dated to 1700 BC. They had gathered dust at Yale University for decades, mistaken for medical texts. But Bottéro uncovered thirty-five of the world’s oldest recipes. They predated the Roman recipes from the 4th century AD by over 2,000 years. And on May 15, 1985, The New York Times cover read: Mesopotamia: Cradle of Haute Cuisine?
My first thought was: Why has nobody made a cookbook based on these recipes? My second: Why don’t I do it? I didn’t sleep that night.
Here’s my first iCloud note about my idea for Table of Gods. I wrote in both Swedish and English. But the title basically says “Ideas for the book.”
After devouring Bottéro’s book, I continued researching ancient Mesopotamian food, which deepened my interest in the subject. The thought of sharing it with the world suddenly felt like my mission. In 2020, with my wife on maternity leave and our second child on the way, I took out a large loan and quit my day job.
The rest is (sorry for the cliché) history. Looking back at those first years, I spent most of my time researching, writing, and rewriting. I was trying to figure out how to piece together my research and structure the book, let alone how to publish a book. I cringe looking back at my early drafts. And I laugh at how lost I was, trying to figure out the path forward. But the early drafts and detours were necessary.
What I’m most proud of is that I didn’t allow myself to be impatient, despite my first goal to publish the book in the fall of 2020.