As the drinking of wine is illegal among the Mos- lems who are now in possession of Western Asia, little is seen of the ancient use of skin-bottles for wine, un- less among the Christians of Georgia, Armenia, and Lebanon, where they are still thus employed. In Georgia the wine is stowed in large ox-skins, and is moved or kept at hand for use in smaller skins of goats or kids. But skins are still most extensively used throughout Western Asia for water. The Arabs, and all those that lead a wandering life, keep their water, milk, and other liquors in leathern bottles. These are
Modern Oriental Water-skins. made of goat-skins. When the animal is killed, they cut off its feet and its head, and they draw it in this manner out of the skin without opening its belly. In Arabia they are tanned with acacia bark, and the hairy part left outside. If not tanned, a disagreeable taste is imparted to the water. They afterward sew up the places where the legs were cut off and the tail, and when it is filled they tie it about the neck. The great leathern bottles are made of the skin of a he-goat, and the small ones, that serve instead of a bottle of water on the road, are made of a kid's skin. These bottles, when rent, are repaired sometimes by setting in a piece, some- times by gathering up the wounded place in the man- ner of a purse ; sometimes they put in a round flat piece of wood, and by that means stop the hole (Char- din, ii, 405; viii, 409; Wellsted, Arabia, i, 89; ii, 78; Lane, Mod. Eg. ii, c. 1; Harmer, ed. Clarke, i, 284). Bruce gives a description of a vessel of the same kind, but larger. ': A gerba is an ox's skin squared, and the edges sewed together by a double seam, which does not let out water. An opening is left at the top, in the same manner as the bung-hole of a cask ; around this the skin is gathered to the size of a large handful, which, when the gerba is full of water, is tied round with whip-cord. These gerbas contain about sixty gallons each, and two of them are the load of a camel. They are then all besmeared on the outside with grease, as well to hinder the water from oozing through as to prevent its being evaporated by the heat of the sun upon the gerba, which, in fact, happened to us twice, so as to put us in danger of perishing with thirst" {Travels, iv, 334). Chardin says that wine in Persia is preserved in skins saturated with pitch, which,
when good, impart no flavor to the wine (T"o
75). Skins for wine or other liquids arc in use to this
day in Spain, where they are called borraehas.
2. It is an error to represent bottles as being made exclusively of dressed or undressed skins among the ancient Hebrews (Jones, Biblical Cyclopcedia, s. v.). Among the Egyptians ornamental vases were of hard stone, alabaster, glass, ivory, bone, porcelain, bronze, silver, or gold ; and also, for the use of the people gen- erally, of glazed pottery or common earthenware. As early as Thotmes III, only two centuries later than the Exodus, B.C. 1490, vases arc known to have exist- ed of a shape so elegant and of workmanship so supe- rior as to show that the art was not, even then, in its infancy (Wilkinson, Anc. Eg. ii, 59, 60). Glass bot-
Ancient Egyptian Bottles properly so calle;l : 1 to 7, of glass; S to 11, of earthenware. From the British Museum.
ties of the third or fourth century B.C. have been found at Babylon by Mr. Layard. At Cairo many persons obtain a livelihood by selling Nile water, which is carried by camels or asses in skins, or by the carrier himself on his back in pitchers of porous gray earth (Lane, Mod. Eg. ii, 153, 155; Burckhardt, Syria, p. Gil ; Maundrell, Journey, p. 407, Bohn). See Glass.
Ancient Assyrian Glass Bottles,
From the British Museum.
Among the Israelites, as early as the days of the Judges (iv, 19 ; v, 25), bottles or vases composed of some earthy material, and apparently of a superior make, were in use; for what in the fourth chapter is termed "a bottle," is in the fifth designated "a lordly dish." Isaiah (xxx, 14) expressly mentions ''the bot- tle of the potters," as the reading in the margin gives it, being a literal translation from the Hebrew, while the terms which the prophet employs shows that he could not have intended any thing made of skin : " He shall breeik it as the breaking of the potter's vessel that is br-oken in pieces, so that there shall not lie found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water out of the pit." In Jeremiah xix, 1, he is commanded, "Go and get a potter's earthen bot- tle;" and (ver. 10) "break the bottle;" "Even so, saith the Lord of Hosts (ver. IT), will I break this peo- ple ami this city as one brcakcth a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again" (see also Jer. xiii. 12- 14). Metaphorically the word bottle is used, especial- ly in poetry, for the clouds considered as pouring out and pouring down water (Job xxxviii, 37), " Who can stay the bottles of heaven?" The passage in the Psalms (lvi, K), "Put thou my tears in a bottle," that is, "treasure them up," "have a regard to them as