BASKET. There are several words in the Hebrew Scriptures by which different kinds of bas kets appear to be indicated : I. in died, which occurs in 2 Kings x. 7, where the heads of Ahab's sons are sent from Samaria to Jezreel in baskets ; Jer. xxiv. 2, as containing figs; and Ps. lxxxi. 6 (rendered pots); where deliverance from the baskets means deliver ance from the bondage of carrying burdens in baskets. In fact, very heavy burdens were thus carried in Egypt, as corn in very large baskets from the field to the threshing-floor, and from the threshing-floor to the granaries. They were carried between two men by a pole resting on their shoulders; which agrees with the previous clause of the cited text, e I removed his shoulder from the burden.' This labour and form of the basket are often shewn in the Egyptian sculptures.
where it obviously denotes baskets in which grapes were deposited as they were gathered. The form of the baskets used for this purpose is often shewn on the Egyptian monuments, and is similar to that represented in fig. 4, cut 126.
5. In all the other places where the word basket occurs, we are doubtless to understand a basket made of rushes, similar both in form and material to those used by carpenters for carrying their tools. This is still the common kind of basket throughout Western Asia; and its use in ancient Egypt is shewn by an actual specimen which was found in a tomb at Thebes, and which is now in the British Museum. It was, in fact, a carpenter's basket, and contained his tools (fig. I).
The specimens of Egyptian baskets in the British Museum, represented in our cut, convey a favour able idea of the basket-work of ancient times. Some of these are worked ornamentally with colours (figs. 3, 5, cut 126; also the modern ex
amples, figs. 2, 7, cut 127). And besides these the monuments exhibit a large variety of hand-baskets, of different shapes, and so extensively employed as to skew the numerous applications of basket-work in the remote times to which these representations extend. They are mostly manufactured, the stronger and larger sorts of the fibres, and the finer of the leaves of the palm-tree, and not infrequently of rushes, but more seldom of reeds.
2. NZU teba which occurs in connection with agricultural objects, the basket and the store' (Deut. xxvi. 2, 4 ; xxviii. 5, 17), and would there fore appear to have been somewhat similar to the above; and, in fact, the Egyptian sculptures spew different baskets applied to this use.
3. Z)D kelub. From the etymology, this ap pears to have been an interwoven basket, made of leaves or rushes. In Jer. v. 27, however, it is used for a bird-cage, which must have been of open work, and probably not unlike our own wicker bird-cages. The name is also applied to fruit baskets (Amos viii. 2), Egyptian examples of which are presented in figs. 2 and 4 (which con tain pomegranates) of the annexed cut.
4. r6thD, :chiliad', occurs only in Jer. vi. 9, In the preceding cut of examples of modern Oriental baskets, many are of the same form, and mostly of the same materials, as those found in the Egyptian tombs or pictured on their walls. We doubt not that the three engravings taken together furnish examples of all the different kinds of bas kets in use among the Israelites.