Mortar [for pulverizi?ig'] is the rendering of naiO (medokah', something for beating). Numb, xi, 8 ; also of drisp {maktesh', lit. a pounder, applied also to a "hol- low" or socket, e. g. of a tooth, Judg. xv, 19), Prov. xxvii, 22, an instrument for comminuting grain or other substances, by means of a pestle, in place of the later invention or mill (q. v.). In the representation of the various processes of preparing bread on the paintings of the tombs of ancient Egypt, it will be found that the
MORTAR
660
MORTAR
I'A rab. p. 45). Among the inhabitants of Ezzehhoue, a Druse village, Burckhardt saw coffee-mortars made
Ancient Egyptians pounding viuious substances in mortars with metal pestles.— From Thebes.
a g I, mortars, d d, pestles. Fiis. 1 and 2, allernstely rnisinR and letting fall the pestles into the mortar. Fips. 3 and 4, sifting the substance after it is pounded ; the coarser parts, h, being returned into the mortar to be again
mortar was similarly employed, and the form of the pestle and mortar is there given, and the manner of using them in pounding articles in large quantities. Their mortars were probably blocks of wood, similar to those employed in India. The pestles were different from those now generally employed, but the manner of u.se, by men striking them alternately, was the same. " Cer- tain persons were also employed in the towns of Egypt, as at the present day in Cairo and other places, to pound various substances in large stone mortars; and salt, seeds, and other things were taken in the same manner by a servant to these shops, whenever it was inconve- nient to have it done in the house. The pestles they used, as well as the mortars them.selves, were precisely similar to those of the modern Egyptians; and their mode of pounding was the same; two men alternately raising ponderous metal pestles with both hands, and directing their falling point to the centre of the mortar, •which is now generally made of a large piece of granite, or other hard stone, scooped out into a long, narrow tube to a little more than half its depth. When the substance was well pounded, it was taken out and passed through a sieve, and the larger particles were again re- turned to the mortar, until it was sufficiently and equally levigated ; and this, and the whole process here repre- sented, so strongly resembles the occupation of the public pounders at Cairo that no one who has been in the habit of walking in the streets of that town can fail to recog- nise the custom, or doubt of its having been handed down from the early Egyptians, and retained without alteration to the present day" (Wilkinson, .Int-. /tTy. ii, 166). " The simplest and probably most ancient method of preparing corn for food was by pomiding it between two stones (Virgil, yFJn. i, 179). Convenience suggested that the lower of the two stones should be hollowed, that the corn might not escape, and that the upper should be shaped so as to be convenient for holding. The pes- tle and mortar must have existed from a very early pe- riod. The Israelites in the desert appear to have pos- sessed mortars and handmills among their necessary domestic utensils. When the manna fell they gathered
it, and either ground it
in the mill or pounded it
ill the mortar till it was
lit for use (Xumb. xi,8).
So in the present day
stone mortars are used
by the Arabs to pound
wheat for their nation- al dish Hhbi/ (Thomson, Land and Honk; i, 1.3-1). Niel)idir describes one of a very simple kind wliich was used on board the vessel in which he went from Jidda to Loheia. Every afternoon one of the sailors had to take the ditrra. or millet, nec- essary for the day's consumption, and pound it ' upon a stone, of which the surface was a little curved, with an- other stone which was long and rounded' {Bescr. de
Eastern CoC'ee-mortar.
out of the trunks of oak-trees (Si/nci, p. 87, 88). The spices for the incense are said to have been prepared by the house of Abtines, a family set apart for the purpose, and the mortar which they used was, with other spoils of the Temple, after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, carried to Rome, where it remained till the time of Hadrian (Reggio, in ]\Iartinet's Ifebr. Chresf. p. 35). Buxtorf mentions a kind of mortar (^012, huttash) in wliicli olives were slighth- bruised before they were taken to the olive-presses {Lex. Talm. s. v. Cr:). From the same root as this last is derived the miiktesh of Prov. xxvii, 22, which probably denotes a mortar of a larger kind in which corn Avas pounded : ' Though tliou bray the fool in the mortar among the bruised corn with the pestle, yet will not his folly dcjiart from liim.' Corn may be separated from its husk and all its good proper- ties preserved by such an operation, but the fool's foUy is so essential a partof himself that no analogous process can remove it from him. Such seems the natural inter- pretation of this remarkable proverb. The language is intentionally exaggerated, and there is no necessity for supposing an allusion to a mode of punisliment l)y which criminals were put to death by being iiounded in a mortar. A custom of this kind existed among the Turks, but there is no distinct trace of it among the Hebrews. The Ulemas, or body of lawyers, in Turkey had the distinguished jjrivilege, according to De Tott {Mem. i, 28, Eng. tr.), of being jmt to death only by the i)estle and the mortar. Sucli, liowever, is sii))])(>scd to be the. reference in the proverb by Jlr. Roberts, who illustrates