World’s Oldest Paycheck Reveals Ancient Sumerian Workers Were Paid In Beer

MessageToEagle.com – We have previously seen that the oldest evidence of beer was found on a Sumerian tablet in Mesopotamia.

The drink was apparently so popular that ancient Sumerian workers were paid for their labor in beer.

A roughly 5,000-year-old cuneiform stone tablet, in possession of the British Museum in London shows how workers were paid their daily rations in liquid gold.  The tablet  made around 3100 to 3000 BC. , excavated from Uruk , an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, depicts a human head eating from a bowl, meaning ‘ration,’ and a conical vessel, meaning ‘beer. There are undoubtedly several reasons why beer was so popular in Mesopotamia. The drink was was safer and tasted better than water.

The Sumerian workers were not the only one who received payment in form of beer.  Beer was also of central importance to ancient Egyptian society. Beer was the staple drink of ancient Egyptian workers and craftsmen while wine was for rich people.

See also:

Walls Of Uruk Built By Sumerian King Gilgamesh 4,500 Years Ago

Oldest Evidence Of Beer Was Found On A Sumerian Tablet In Mesopotamia

Secret Ingredient In A 5,000-Year-Old Beer Recipe Discovered

Egyptian Beer Brewing: A Legacy Of Ancient Times Also Found In Israel

In ancient Egypt, workers often received wages were often paid in beer and other supplies and the workmen living in the workers village at Giza received beer three times a day as part of their rations. A daily ration could be as much as four to five liters beer.

There are also records of poet and the “Father of English literature” Geoffrey Chaucher receiving a yearly salary of 252 gallons of wine from Richard II.

Receiving wages in form of alcohol has happened on several occasions throughout history, and the trend is still practiced by some modern companies.

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