As the drinking of wine is illegal among the Moslems who are now in possession of Western Asia, little is seen of the ancient use of skin bottles for wine, unless 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.
early as Thothmes III., assumed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus, B. c. 1490, vases are known to have existed of a shape so elegant and of work manship so superior, as to shew that the art was not, even then, in its infancy.
Many of the bronze vases found at Thebes and in other parts of Egypt are of a quality which can not fail to excite admiration, and which proves the skill possessed by the Egyptians in the art of working and compounding metals. Their shapes are most various—some neat, some plain, some gro tesque ; some in form not unlike our cream-jugs, others as devoid of elegance as the wine-bottles of our cellars or the flower-pots of our conserva tories. Thcy had also bottles, small vases, and pots, used for holding ointment or for other pur poses connected with the toilet, which were made of alabaster, glass, porcelain, and hard stone. The But skins are still more extensively used through out Western Asia for water. Their most usual forms are shewn in the above cut (146), which also displays the manner in which they are carried. The water-carriers bear water in such skins and in this manner.
It is an error to represent bottles as being reader is here presented with a view of some of these vases and bottles, from actual specimens in the British Museum.
The subjoined representation of a case con taining bottles, supported on a stand, is among the Egyptian antiquities in the Berlin Museum, and is supposed to have belonged to a medical man or to the toilet of a Theban lady (Wilkinson, ii. 217). It forms a suitable conclusion to this set of illus trations.
Thy perishable nature of skin-bottles led, at an early period, to the employment of implements of a more durable kind ; and it is to be presumed that the children of Israel would, during their sojourn in Egypt, learn, among other arts practised by their masters, that of working in pottery-ware. Thus, 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 bottle 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 strew that he could not have intended anything made of skin ' he shall break it as the of the potter's vessel that is broken in pieces, so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a client to take fire from the hearth, or to take water out of the pit.' In the nineteenth chap. ver. i, Jeremiah is com manded, Go and get a potter's earthen bottle ; ' and (ver. to) break the bottle ;' ` Even so, saith the Lord of Hosts (ver. i /), will I break this people and this city as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again' (see also Jer. xiii. /2-14). Metaphorically the word bottle is used, especially in poetry, for the clouds considered as pouring out and pouring down water (Job xxxviii. 37), ' Who can stay the bottles of heaven ? ' The cut already given in p. 284 affords an illustration of a passage in the Psalms (lvi. 8), ` Put thou my tears into thy bottle '—that is, ' treasure them up'—` have a regard to them as something precious.' It was, as appears from the cut at p. 284, customary to tie up in bags or small bottles, and secure with a seal, articles of value, such as precious stones, necklaces. and other ornaments.—J. R. B.