Locusts

A banquet scene in an Assyrian bas-relief depicts servants carrying choice delicacies to the royal table such as pomegranates and locusts en brochette, which were appreciated by high and low. Locusts attacked the land in devastatingly huge numbers, and one of the ways of eliminating them was to eat them. This, their allegedly pleasant taste, and the relative ease with which they were caught made them a convenient source of food. They were also made into pickles, and fermented into sauce, called ‘siqqu’ in Akkadian. And the tradition continued.