March 2025

Mentioned on Tasting History.

Some of you have recently joined the waitlist after watching Max Miller’s episode on Mersu, history’s oldest dessert. I had the honor to help Max—whose YouTube channel I’ve followed since the early days—with sources on Mersu.

It felt surreal to hear my name mentioned on a channel I’ve followed for so long. Max said I helped him “with a lot of the research for the video,” which I think is an overstatement. Max is a great historian in his own right, and as some of you know, also an entertainer and educator.

Perfecting the cover

Every book I’ve read on creativity says that perfection is the enemy disguised as fear. An illusion. A trap. Something to be avoided at all costs. I disagree—though I’m definitely afraid of releasing my baby into the world after baking it for 70 months.

But I have a different take on perfection and perfectionists in particular. It may be more of a curse than a blessing. But it’s not something you can decide to be, or let go of.

Since I was a toddler, I’ve been a control freak who couldn’t stand most kids because they were, well, kids. I look for emergency exits when entering restaurants or hotels. I book flight seats near the exit doors. I count the days until my statistical death (it gives me a sense of control—and urgency to prioritize the right things).

I also had my wife’s blood type checked before she delivered our first child, in case she would need blood during the delivery (which she did), and then double-checked that the doctors gave her the correct blood each time they brought a new bag. It’s not that I don’t trust people (or doctors). It’s just who I am.

So how is this relevant to the cover? As I shared in January’s progress email, Table of Gods will look like a clay tablet. I explicitly told my designers NOT to make it look like a book. So the cover will now be debossed with cuneiform signs (debossed = pressed down onto the cover) to resemble and feel like a clay tablet.

The latest cover, which isn’t set in clay (we’re going to test different colors, spine designs, etc.).

Since only one in a million people (actually less) can read cuneiform, we could have used random cuneiform signs and be done with the cover by now. But something didn’t feel right about it, so I paused the design process.

I thought about Steve Jobs’ father, Paul Jobs. When Steve was a child, his father asked him to help build a fence around their family home in Mountain View, California. Paul emphasized that the back of the fence, which no one would see, should be as well-crafted and beautiful as the front. When Steve questioned why, his father replied:

"Even though nobody will see it, you will know.”

I get goosebumps every time I read that. To me, it’s about a commitment to do everything with utmost devotion. Would Apple have become Apple if Steve hadn’t lived by that advice? I don’t think so. Will I be able to lie peacefully on my deathbed knowing that I could have made the cover better but didn’t—I don’t think so.

In early March I decided the cover needed to have the correct cuneiform signs from the tablet holding the world’s oldest recipes, which inspired me to write Table of Gods in the first place.

So I started deciphering the tablet myself and realized an hour later it would take me a year to finish. So I asked around among Assyriologists (who know how to decipher clay tablets), and Dr. Gojko Barjamovic eventually put me in touch with Andrew Deloucas from Harvard University, who reads cuneiform better than I read English.

After e-meeting with Andrew, we decided to use the signs from eight recipes of the original tablet (two of which I have in the book), which would give us around 300 signs that could be used on the cover.

But it turns out that some cuneiform signs are so detailed not even the best printing machines in the world can deboss them, so we’re now in the process of replacing them with simpler signs that represent the same meaning.

The result will be a cover with the signs from the actual cuneiform tablet holding the world’s oldest recipes. Similar to the back of the fence in Steve Jobs’ childhood home—most people won’t know. But you and I will.

To the left is the actual tablet holding 25 of the world’s oldest recipes written in the city of Ur around 1750 BCE. To the right is a hand copy of the same tablet with markings on some of the signs (recipes) we will use on the cover. These signs are then translated into unicode—a universal system for encoding and representing text, which converts the handwritten cuneiform into signs like 𒀸𒋗 𒊑 𒀀 𒌈 𒀭 𒇷 𒉿 𒀀 𒋫 𒈾, which will be debossed on the cover.

I need your help

I recently updated my website, tableofgods.com, with praise I’ve got from scholars about my book. But as I browsed the website the other day, I felt that something was off.

I’ve always said that Table of Gods is “a cookbook inspired by the world’s oldest recipes written on clay tablets 4,000 years ago.”

While that’s true, it doesn’t feel completely right to say anymore. It’s like saying that an iPhone is a device you can call from, or that a Rolls-Royce is a car that takes you from A to B.

Table of Gods is so much more than a book with ancient recipes. It’s perhaps even misleading to say it’s a cookbook as people may actually expect it’s a book focused only on food and recipes.

Table of Gods is a time machine that takes people to ancient Mesopotamia through all their senses, not just taste. I built this time machine because I struggled to connect to my heritage as a child living in the diaspora, and when I got my own children I decided they wouldn’t go through the same experience.

Apart from the 64 ancient recipes in the book, introduced by as many myths, legends, and real-life stories—Table of Gods takes the passenger through eleven cities in ancient Mesopotamia, starting in 3566 BCE and ending in 566 BCE.

It’s a road trip where you’ll get to:

• Experience the marshes in Eridu

• Harvest barley in Uruk

• Drink beer at a tavern in Lagash

• Learn to play the Royal Game of Ur (the world’s oldest board game) in Ur

• Learn to write your name in cuneiform in Nippur

• Get a private tour in the palace of Mari by King Zimri-Lim himself

• Visit the royal graves in Ashur

• Attend history’s largest party (by far) in Kalhu

• Witness and (if you want) join the Assyrian army in Dur-Sharrukin

• Gaze at the Hanging Gardens in Nineveh

• Celebrate the new year in Babylon

...and much more.

Perhaps I’ve already done a good job communicating this? Or maybe it’s new to you (I hope it’s good news then). It would be helpful to know how you were introduced to Table of Gods and what your first thoughts were about the book. Just email me at arim@tableofgods.com and let me know :) I write back to all my emails personally.