MORTAR from the unused root In,to boil up, hence a pot), first mentioned as em ployed by the Israelites in the wilderness (Num. xi. 8), the people went about and gathered it (manna), and ground it in mills, and beat it in a mortar, and baked it,' etc. In this way it was that the Jews prepared themselves food of the God-given manna. The process was a very simple one, being nothing more than the pounding of the manna between two stones. The under or lower stone was slightly hollowed for the purpose of holding the food, while the upper stone was shaped to the hand, and used as a pestle. This is believed to have been the most ancient method in preparing food from grain, and is still in use in the East, both in Arabia and in certain districts in Palestine. The Druses pound their coffee in mortars made from the trunks of oak trees (see Burckhardt's Syria, p. 8S). Kitto's remarks on the mortar as used for pounding wheat, in his note on Prov. xxvii. 22 (Heb. there is V,Itp*, from to pound or bray), are as follows We do not infer that this (among wheat with a pestle) implies that the wheat was pounded to meal instead of being ground, hut that it was pounded to be separated from the husk. The Jews probably had no rice, but there are several passages from which we may gather that they used wheat in the same way that rice is now used—that is, boiled up in pillaus, variously prepared. In fact, we have partaken of wheat thus employed in the remote mountains, where rice could not be obtained, or only at a price which the villagers could not afford ; and it is also so used among the Arabs, forming a very palatable and nutritious food. For this purpose it is necessary that, as with rice, the husk should be previously disengaged from the grain ; and if we suppose this object 'was attained with wheat by a similar treatment with that to which rice is now subjected, the present text may be very satisfactorily explained. There are men, and even women, who gain their bread by the labour of husking rice, which they generally perform in pairs. Their implements consist of a rude wooden mortar, formed of a block hollowed out ; pestles, about five feet long, with a heavy block at the upper end, and a sieve for sifting the pounded grain. They carry these utensils to the house where their services are required, and, if men, stripped to the skin (except their drawers), and pursue their labour in a shady part of the court yard. When two work together, they commonly stand opposite each other, and strike their pestles alternately, as blacksmiths strike their iron. Some
times, however, one pestle alone acts, and the labourers relieve each other, the relieved person taking the easier duty of supplying the mortar, and removing and sifting the cleaned grain. From the weight of the pestle the labour of pounding is very severe, and the results of the process are but slowly produced' (Pict. Bib.) Most writers and travellers concur in thinking that the mortar, as a mode of punishment, was unrecognized among the Hebrews. Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar,' therefore, is hyperbolical. At the same time, its use among other nations as a mode of punishment might not be entirely unknown. Among other Eastern nations the mortar was employed to pound certain classes of criminals to death.' It has usually been resorted to in inflicting capital punishment upon persons whose sanctity or high rank forbade the shedding of their blood, so that the letter of the law has been observed, while its spirit was violated. It used to be considered that braying in a mortar was the only mode in which death could be in flicted upon the Grand Mufti of the Turks, and instances of its being so inflicted are on record. But this is not confined to them. Volney writes, the person of a pasha who acquits himself well in his office becomes inviolable, even by the Sultan, and it is no longer permitted to shed his blood. But the divan has invented a method of satisfying its vengeance upon those who are protected by this privilege, without departing from the literal interpretation of the law, by ordering them to be pounded in a mortar, or smothered in sacks, of which there have been various instances.' It is also related by Kn.olles, in his History of the Turks, that the guards of the tower who had let the prisoner Coreskie escape, some of them were impaled, and some were pounded or beaten to pieces in great mortars of iron, in which they usually pound their rice. The practice, and the ideas connected with it, may be traced farther East. In Siam, royal criminals or princes of the blood convicted of capital crimes, are put into a large caldron, and pounded to pieces with j5estles of sandal wood, because none of the royal blood must be spilt upon the ground, it being by their religion deemed a great impiety to con taminate the sacred blood, by suffering it to mix with the earth (Pict. Bib. Prov. xxvii. 22 ; also Thomson's The Land and the Book, chap. viii. ; Roberts' Orient. Illustr., p. 363).—W. J. C.