Mersu

Mersu (also Mirsu or Mirisu) is a sweet made in ancient Mesopotamia. As a food made with dates and fats, it appears in delivery records and offering records inscribed on clay tablets. In Mari, a city in what is now Syria, dates and nuts were collected for the king’s meals, and the people who made mersu even had a dedicated title.

It is a sweet that combines sweet fruit, flour and fat, but its ingredients varied by period and purpose. The name appears in many settings, from palace cuisine and temple offerings to food eaten after taking medicine. No complete recipe (the proportions of ingredients and the method of preparation) survives. Even so, tracing what was used, who made it and where it was sent reveals the work of making sweets in antiquity.

The “Investiture” mural from Courtyard 106 of the palace of Mari. It depicts the king and Ishtar at the center, surrounded by palms and by deities holding vessels from which water springs. Early 2nd millennium BCE, restored. Louvre Museum (AO 19826). Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain / Original. Perspective corrected by the photographer at original publication. No further modifications made for this use.

Dates and pistachios for the king’s meals

In the 18th century BCE, Mari was a city on the middle Euphrates. Documents relating to the court of King Zimri-Lim include a record of receiving dates and pistachios for mersu. It was published as no. 13 in volume XI of the Royal Archives of Mari, ARM XI 13.

An English-language presentation based on Jean Bottéro’s translation gives the quantities as 120 liters of dates and 10 liters of pistachios. They were intended for the king’s meals. The date is recorded as the 14th day of the month of Kiskissum, in the year after Zimri-Lim captured Ashlakka. Along with the ingredients for the sweet, the record preserves the month and day and identifies the year by the king’s deeds.

These figures are the received quantities converted into modern units of volume. The number of sweets produced and the proportions for a single batch are not recorded. The combination of dates and pistachios is one concrete example of preparations for the king’s meals.

A sweet that mixes flour, fat and spices

The Akkadian word mersu has variant forms such as mirsu and mirisu. In Sumerian writing, NINDA.I.DE.A is used. NINDA is a term related to grain-based foods such as bread, and this sweet was also placed within the broad family of ancient breads.

The name mersu has been explained in connection with the word marāsu, which denotes the action of mixing something into a liquid. There were methods that added sweet ingredients such as dates to a combination of flour and fat. Records from periods other than that of Mari show examples of refined oil and butter, or dates and oil, being prepared for mersu.

The flavorings were not limited to sweet fruit either. Mari’s ingredient records list cumin-type spices, coriander and others as being for mersu. Descriptions of rituals from later periods also feature mersu accompanied by honey or ghee. Ghee is a fat made by separating out the fat from milk. The combination of spices, fruit and fat calls to mind today’s fruit-filled cakes, but whether mersu was a risen, sponge-like confection is not known.

Ingredient allocations, offerings to the gods, meals connected with medicine, and quantities in baskets: this is our own sourced explanatory chart summarizing the contexts in which the name mersu appears. It is not an image of the original texts. Source: Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, CAD M/2 (1977), pp.108–109. Figure: Sweetlore.

The people who made mersu, and large vessels

In Mari, the title ša mersi, referring to cooks who made mersu, is recorded. Among the work that supported the palace’s meals, there was a role responsible for making mersu.

Vessels were also issued to the makers. Called nanbir, vessels of different capacities, 40 sila, 30 sila and 5 sila, are listed. The sila was a unit of volume in ancient Mesopotamia. It is thought that these may have been vessels for combining or heating ingredients.

Capacities of the nanbir vessels issued to mersu makers in Mari. The bar lengths show the ratio of 40, 30 and 5 sila. Source: Elizabeth Rosemary Ellison, doctoral dissertation (1978), vol.1, p.127. Figure: Sweetlore (sourced explanatory chart).

In records tallying the Mari king’s meals, mersu also appears on occasions when large quantities of food were prepared. It was involved not only in daily meals but also in the work of preparing large meals that brought people together. The receipt of ingredients, the issuing of vessels and the makers’ title are each preserved in palace documents.

A terracotta food mold excavated from Room 77 of the palace of Mari, depicting a goat and a lion attacking a bull. Louvre Museum AO 18902, 18th century BCE. It has not been confirmed as a mold specifically for mersu. Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / public domain / Original, unmodified.

A history as an offering that predates the palace

Foods connected with mersu appear even in records from the late 3rd millennium BCE, earlier than Mari. In Ur during the Third Dynasty of Ur, NINDA.I.DE.A was counted among the offerings to the temple gate and recorded as an item made with flour and ghee. This shows a sweet of grain and fat that cannot be seen from the Mari receipts, which center on sweet fruit, alone.

The peace side of the “Standard of Ur,” c. 2600 BCE. The upper register shows people holding cups and musicians, and the middle and lower registers show people carrying livestock and goods. Excavated from Royal Tomb PG779 at Ur, British Museum (ME 121201). It is a banquet image older than the Third Dynasty of Ur, from which records of mersu offerings survive. Photo: Geni / distortion correction and cropping: LeastCommonAncestor / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Original, no further modifications.

Mersu continued to be used as an offering in later periods. Ancient ritual texts include scenes in which mersu, honey and ghee are placed on an offering table, and the name can be traced from the Old Babylonian period down to still later times. Use for the king’s meals and use as offerings to the gods coexist in the long history of mersu.

An offering list from Nippur dating to around 1750 BCE names, in addition to flour, dates, ghee, cream, raisins, apples and figs as being for mersu. The dates are recorded separately as ordinary dates and dates from Dilmun, which corresponds to present-day Bahrain. The vessels for the offering are one golden plate and two ordinary plates. From the kinds of fruit and their place of origin to milk fat and the vessels used to present the offering, the list preserves a combination different from that of Mari.

“Plaque with banquet scene” excavated at Nippur, c. 2700–2500 BCE. Seated figures holding cups are carved in gypsum alabaster. It is an image from a different period of the same city, about 750–950 years older than the mersu offering list above. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (59.41.10). Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Public Domain · Original, unmodified.

Lexical texts also contain designations accompanied by city names, such as the mersu of Nippur and the mersu of Hursagkalamma. Another, later record preserves examples of dates and emmer wheat being used for “the mersu of the hero.” Both the records involving wheat, fruit and fat and the designations accompanied by city names show the range of foods called by the same name. What differences in formula these city-name designations represent is not known.

eSAD M, a modern scholarly dictionary supplement that compiles the meanings and uses of mersu, pp.46–47 (updated March 27, 2025). Page 46 shows designations such as those of Nippur and Hursagkalamma, and page 47 shows records of dates and emmer wheat used for “the mersu of the hero.” Attribution: Supplement to the Akkadian Dictionaries project / Leipzig University. Original PDF / CC BY-SA 3.0. Relevant portions cropped.

Ten baskets of sweets, and a bite after medicine

Mersu was also a food recorded together with quantities and containers. An Old Babylonian document from Sippar lists ten baskets of mersu and also uses the expression “white mersu.” The deep brown of dates alone cannot be assumed to be the color of this sweet as a whole.

Medical texts also mention mersu eaten with butter after taking medicine. Its use both in ritual offerings and in meals connected with treatment shows that ancient foods do not fit into the same categories as today’s desserts.

Mersu, whose name can be traced as far back as the late 3rd millennium BCE, is one of the sweets with records surviving from early times. Because neither the moment of its invention nor a complete cooking procedure is recorded, it cannot be confirmed as “the world’s oldest sweet,” nor as the oldest surviving complete recipe for a sweet.

Making mersu in a modern kitchen

Today’s reconstructions include versions in which dates and nuts are combined and rolled into balls, as well as versions wrapped in wheat dough and baked. The 2018 trial by Biblical Archaeology Review is a variation in which pistachios are mixed into simmered dates, wrapped in a dough of wheat flour, butter and milk, and baked in the oven.

While the ingredients conveyed by the ancient texts serve as the starting point, the shaping and cooking steps are supplied by modern cooks.

Glossary