BOTTLE. Natural objects, it is obvious, would be the earliest things employed for holding and preserving liquids ; and of natural objects those would be preferred which either presented themselves nearly or quite ready for use, or such as could speedily be wrought into the requisite shape. The skins of animals afford in themselves more conveniences for the purpose than any other natural product. When an animal had been slain, either for food or sacrifice, it was easy and natural to use the hide for enveloping the fat or other sub stances, and with very little trouble the parts of the skin might be sewed together so as to make it hold liquids. The first bottles, therefore, were probably made of the skins of animals. Accord ingly, in the Iliad (iii. 247) the attendants are represented as bearing wine for use in a bottle made of goat's skin, al^yElcp. In Hero dotus also (ii. 121) a passage occurs by which it appears that it was customary among O. an cient Egyptians to use bottles made of skins ; and from the language employed by him it may be inferred that a bottle was formed by sewing up the skin and leaving the projection of the leg and foot to serve as a cock ; hence it was termed 7roledis. This aperture was closed with a plug or a string. In some instances every part was sewed up except the neck ; the neck of the animal thus became the neck of the bottle. This alleged use of skin-bottles by the Egyptians is confirmed by the monuments, on which such various forms as the following occur. Fig. i is curious as skewing the mode in which they were carried by a yoke : and as it balances a large bottle in a case, this skin may be presumed to have contained wine. Fig. 7 is such a- skin of water as in the agricultural scenes is suspended from the bough of a tree, and from which the labourers occasionally drink. Figs. 2 and 3 represent two men with skins at their backs, belonging to a party of nomades entering Egypt.
The Greeks and Romans also were accustomed to use bottles made of skins, chiefly for wine. Some interesting examples of those in use among the Romans are represented at Herculaneum and Pompeii, and are copied in the annexed en graving (cut 145).
Skin-bottles doubtless existed among the He. brews even in patriarchal times ; but the first clear notice of them occurs Joshua ix. 4, where it is said that the Gibeonites, wishing to impose upon Joshua as if they had come from a long distance, took ' old sacks upon their asses, and wine bottles old and rent and bound up.' So in the t3th verse of the same chapter : `these bottles of wine which we filled were new ; and behold, they be rent; and these our garments and our shoes are become old by reason of the very long journey.' Age, then, had the effect of wearing and tearing the bottles in question, which must consequently have been of skin. To the same effect is the passage in Job xxxii. 59, ' My belly is as wine which hath no vent ; it is ready to burst like new bottles.' Our Saviour's language (Matt. ix. 57 ; Luke v. 37, 38 ; Mark ii. 22) is thus clearly explained : ' Men do not put new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break and the wine made exclusively of dressed or undressed skins among the ancient IIebrews. Among the Egyp tians ornamental vases were of hard stone, alabaster, glass, ivory, bone, procelain, bronze, silver or gold ; and also, for the use of the people generally, of glazed pottery or common earthenware. As runneth out, and the bottles perish ;' New wine must be put into new bottles, and both are pre served. To the conception of an English reader who knows of no bottles but such as are made of clay or glass, the idea of bottles breaking through age pre sents an insuperable difficulty ; but skins may be come old, rent, and bound up ;' they also prove, in time, hard and inelastic, and would in such a condi tion be very unfit to hold new wine, probably in a state of active fermentation. Even new skins might he unable to resist the internal pressure caused by fermentation. The passage just cited from Job presents no inconsistency, because there ' new' means not fresh,' but new to this use.