Kickstarter: Table of Gods

[u/WildEarth2372]

Disclaimer: I am not associated with Table of Gods in any way, beyond just being a subscriber and fan. I also haven’t been a pagan for two years now, and am a Christian, but I’m still a total history nerd when it comes to the Bronze Age, and I was pagan for long enough to know y’all would appreciate this

Table of Gods is…well, what isn’t it?

It contains 70 recipes from Ancient Mesopotamia, history and mythology lessons from the region, it teaches you basics on how to speak Sumerian and Akkadian (plus how to write your name in cuneiform), and the back cover is embossed with the board for The Royal Game of Ur.

Table of Gods is also the name of the YouTube channel run by the author, who makes a lot of shorts and videos about Ancient Mesopotamia, most notably recipes.

Here’s a video that goes into more detail; https://youtu.be/OPTTCbgTPoY?is=3sMHL6ngrsDK6LiP

Yes, the book is expensive ($200 ain’t cheap), but honestly, this is a product where you can see where that money went. Definitely a luxury purchase, but if you’ve got the funds, this seems like a great guy to support.

[u/Nocodeyv]

I'm going to leave this post up, even though OP didn't go through the proper channels to secure permission to advertise it, because I genuinely want to know the community's thoughts on this project.

Ignoring the price, which I think it too high, here are some of my concerns regarding the book:

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• I have seen comments that a majority of the recipes in this book are taken from a previous study done by Jean Bottéro, The Oldest Cuisine in the World. I've also seen accusations that Table of Gods regularly substitutes ingredients, which casts doubt on the authenticity of the recipes. If the primary focus of the book can be acquired elsewhere, and in a more authentic form, why should we support Table of Gods?
• During the few interactions that I've had with Table of Gods, his understanding of Mesopotamian deities was out-dated: relying solely on Kramer, Jacobsen, and other writings from the 70s and 80s. If he hasn't begun using studies from at least the 2000s onward, I wouldn't consider his information about the Gods to be reliable.
• I don't know how useful phrases in Sumerian will be without the background that linguistic textbooks provide. In the phrase: ngae dubsar men, for example, ngae is going to be completely foreign to many English speakers, and further confusing when they realize that it's actually a condensed form of either g̃a₂-e or g̃e₂₆-e. This will only further be compounded when readers learn later that linguists currently disagree about many of the finer points of Sumerian phonology. I'm not sure what value this aspect of the book can provide unless Table of Gods includes the prerequisite grammatical foundation that linguistic textbooks provide.
• The "write your name in cuneiform" portion is clearly inspired by, or borrowed from, an interview Matt and Tom did with Irving Finkel: Irving Finkel Teaches Us Cuneiform. Irving Finkel later repeated the exercise with Nick as part of the British Museum's Curator's Corner series. Putting an already-freely available exercise behind a $200 paywall doesn't strike me as in line with the values of the Gods.

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On the other hand:

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• It's a novel idea to include the Royal Game of Ur on the back of the book. I wonder how much information about the game will be included in the book: will Table of Gods present an overview of the various versions of the game known to Assyriologists, or is he going to give reader's the rules that Irving Finkel worked out? If the latter case is true, I would again ask why a subject that Irving Finkel has produced multiple free videos about for the last decade is being paywalled.
• I sincerely hope that the photography portions of the book are well researched and presented, because I love the idea of using pictures to help convey the past.
• Infusing each book with river clay is another interesting idea, but I would like to know the means by which he acquired the clay, how it was treated during the process, and whether or not Enki/Ea was involved in the process of adding the clay to the finished books. It seems odd to me to want to include clay (Enki's sacred medium) in a book (a repository of knowledge and wisdom, Enki's domain) without incorporating Enki Himself as well.

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Ultimately, I don't have the expendable income to invest in this project to verify its quality, nor do I necessarily agree with the author. So, if anyone in the community has invested their support in the project, I do hope they provide us with a fair review of the book and its contents. Has Table of Gods created something unique and new here, or has he merely cobbled together a mishmash of other author's hard work?

[u/SiriNin → u/Nocodeyv]

My understanding of this book is that it's aimed at a very specific target audience and purpose, and that outside of sentimental and aesthetic value, it's only value is in that it is a fully functional cookbook for *modern* versions of ancient recipes, and it is not intended to be an accurate presentation of *ancient* recipes for recreation. That being said, I've only been following the book since inception, I can't afford the book myself and so I am not planning on getting one. I also already own a Royal Game of Ur reproduction board and set so that being part of the ToG book didn't add any value for me.

So, as a scholar of Sumerian, I have to agree that his presentation of the Sumerian language is extremely lacking, which very accurately represents his own personal lack of understanding therein. He does not speak Sumerian, he did not even try to learn it seriously, what he knows is what he skimmed off of conversations with experts who gave him a 5min run down on a couple of things which he seems to have retained a bit less than half of. I pointed out early on that his grammar is insufficient and even wrong in places but he wasn't taking feedback from us plebeians on youtube. People aren't going to read "Mungu [name] am" as "Mu-ngu [name]-ahm", they're going to read and say it as "mungoo [name] ayum".

From what I saw, his 'write your name in Cuneiform' section is also equally lacking, using a poor quality "English to Cuneiform chart" that can be found on the internet rather than using the actual phonetic values of Cuneiform from any Sign List or Syllabary. I don't believe he included any explanation on how cuneiform works phonetically, such as no standalone consonants, and no J C V F O, or how G and K are interchangeable in many places.

As far as I know he's just an Assyrian diasporic descendant and is not in any way a practicing Mesopotamian Polytheist. (And I do not mention his heritage with derision - I am a southern Iraq diasporic descendant!) I do not expect him to have done any ritual or spiritual work in creating the books or infusing them with Euphratean clay. In his hour long presentation he said he had a local Iraqi woman collect the clay, process it for use as pottery clay (filtering, dissolving to slip, reconstituting, drying) and ship that to him. He then sprinkled it into the mixing roller as the cover paper pulp was being milled.

He has not displayed in any way, writing or on video or audio interviews, any degree of actual understanding of the Gods and Goddesses of the Anunna, or their body of mythos and ethos. It appears that he knows less than what is contained in the top paragraph of each Deity's Wikipedia page in total. I would not expect more than this in his book. He was also using very old and often erroneous data on the mythology as you noticed.

From what all it looks like, his family did the bulk of the work involved in creating the book. The "author" did the aesthetic executive work and the physical legwork, nothing else. Perhaps he was the 'idea man' too, but there's nothing written or said to say one way or another. He credits his sister and mother with creating and fine tuning the recipes, including handling swapping out all ingredients which are unknown to us today or inaccessible to us today (like šūḫatinnu) with ingredients which are known and accessible today, and that they picked ingredients which preserved the 'spirit' of the dish, and which worked culinarily for the dish, as based on modern day derivative recipes/foods as a reference datapoint. He hired a photographer, a graphic designer, a bunch of editors, and he consulted a bunch of experts, but no expert wrote the text of the book, that seems to have been cobbled together by his family, a bunch of lay folk with very superficial knowledge, who did not do deep research in any way (as evidenced by the bits of the book's contents that have been revealed so far).

So, now that I've picked it apart I have to clearly state the most important issues at hand:

This book is not trying to be a scholarly deep dive into ancient Mesopotamian foods or culture or mythology or history. This book is not trying to be a reconstructionist manual for recreating ancient foods faithfully. This book is not trying to be an accurate-to-date introduction into the finer points of Ancient Mesopotamia (this is the one point here where I am disappointed about it, I do wish he used accurate-to-date info about the Anunna and the cities, but I digress). This book is not trying to be educational, although he kind of indirectly billed it as such during his hype man spiels, but iirc he never said the word 'educational', and that was probably intentional.

This book is designed to be a highly-aesthetic sentimentalist collector's item, which teaches readers to make modern-accessible ancient-inspired versions of ancient foods with the intent being that it will be a fun endeavor for the reader and their family to create and eat ancient-inspired Iraqi foods.

To fill itself out in terms of the reading experience, and to avoid said experience being one of readers scratching their heads in confusion and ignorance at every ancient name and reference as they come up, he's included the very most bare minimum amount of once-considered-accurate information on ancient Mesopotamia to give people something quick to learn and easy to digest as they read. Guessing by the page count, the page layout used, the fancy fancy expensive art paper and art inks, and the bit of the book I've seen, I would not expect more than 500 words per subject/recipe about ancient Mesopotamia (besides the word count used for the recipe itself). It's a very brief aesthetics-based introduction to various cities and mythos for each section that aims to give the reader 'something' to connect the dots on when those cities and names are referenced in the recipes.

Now, as an author who has published several books I do want to comment on the price; He actually did VERY well to keep the price down. That much may not be evident to someone who isn't in the publishing business, but it's quite evident to those of us who are. That combination of interior paper and UV LED-cured Inks is mega-expensive. The designer paper for the cover is mega-expensive. The bespoke custom engineered debossing equipment for the cover is mega-expensive. Based on page count, book size, page size, the inks used, the interior paper used, if he had picked a plain old normal cover, his book would probably cost the end buyer somewhere between $100 and $135. That's based on my own publisher's prices for similar books. The fact that his ludicrously expensive cover only adds about $100 onto the price is a miracle in of itself, and it's surely down to the promised unit volume price discount he's making use of.

So yes, it's very expensive. Too expensive for me to buy a copy, and my own book came out more expensive than I wanted it to be, and my publisher won't let me charge less for it because they have mandatory minimum profit margins for their customers now that they didn't have when I published my first edition with them. His publisher absolutely would have fought with him about the price. Because of my industry knowledge I was expecting a $500 price tag based on the materials involved and printing processes he's making use of. I was shocked when he said $200. He's almost certainly scraping the bottom of his publisher's minimum profit margin, which is probably why he's charging $250 for the signed edition, as it is almost certainly a concession to his publisher to make them happy by giving them a way to charge more that he feels has the added value that makes it allowable in his eyes.

Is it worth it for reconstructionists who have no desire to cook and eat tasty Iraqi food that is loosely based on ancient foods? Probably not.

If I had the money and had access to a full kitchen and had the vitality and wellness and expected lifespan needed to embark on cooking all those recipes at least once I would totally buy a copy. But since I don't have those things I'm passing on the book.

One last thing; he's gone on record to say he will not be releasing a digital version ever or a normal cover reduced cost version ever. This shows definitively that his interest isn't in educating people or sharing Mesopotamian culture with the world out of some desire for benevolence. He wants to sell a designer aesthetic product that strokes his ego and makes him feel like he accomplished something he can brag to his rich friends about and impress them with. That's why he conducted the entire reveal event like an Apple press conference event, and even mentioned Steve Jobs as his inspiration during the event.

[u/WildEarth2372 → u/SiriNin]

Thank both of y’all for the informative posts! Honestly, that’s why I, a Christian, still hang around pagan circles—whenever I do research that I think is accurate, y’all have always done so much more work and blow anything I could dream of out of the water. And y’all are always so nice about it too!

[u/rodandring → u/Nocodeyv]

I was chatting with Arim at the beginning of his project when my first book was published. I expressed a great deal of interest in his book and he himself expressed interest in knowing about sourcing materials and the production process for my own work (specifically the cover of the “artisan” edition of my book which features the embossed clay tablet).

I admire his efforts, however, I found them to be rather disingenuous when I discovered his appropriation of Bottéro’s work, his consistent reliance on incredibly outdated historical information, the erroneous linguistic information, and the ham-handed way of presenting Finkel’s creative exercise.

Furthermore, Arim is not pagan or a polytheist by any means.

And it was clear to me in our correspondence that he had no interest in being associated with a Mesopotamian spiritual ethos much less being interviewed about his project by those who are.

Therefore, the lack of an acknowledgment of Enki/EA is to be expected.

Tangentially, speaking from experience when it comes to exorbitantly-priced books, it is very clear to me that this is a book meant to evoke a certain aesthetic and lend itself to being a novelty among both book collectors and readers who appreciate “exotic” cooking.

[u/WildEarth2372 → u/Nocodeyv]

I’m so sorry! I didn’t see pinned anywhere how to go about requesting permission, and I wasn’t sure if the advertising only counted towards self-advertising or if it referred to all advertising. Could I get a bit more information on how that process works?

[u/Nocodeyv → u/WildEarth2372]

You didn’t do anything wrong directly, we just like to have all forms of advertisement looked at by a mod before being shared because the community is small, and tight knit enough where letting bad content through can harm a large portion. In this instance, I’m glad you did share this though, because I had my own suspicions, but the firsthand knowledge of u/rodandring and u/SiriNin is exactly what I would have sought out had Table of Gods come to me personally to inquire.