Tourists still find that they are admirably suited to travelers in waterless districts, or districts where the water is brackish and bad. The mention of them, however, in such various accounts and connections as those for instance of the story of Hagar (Ge 21:19), of the Gibeonites (Jos 9:4), and of David (1Sa 25:18) shows that they were in common use among ancient Orientals, pastoral and peasant alike.
#ANCIENT WINESKIN PORTABLE#
Such bottles, being more portable and less breakable than earthenware, were peculiarly well suited to the use of primitive and nomad peoples, as they are to the roving Bedouin of today. When leather bags are sewed up the joinings are smeared with grease, as the skin-bottles of all sorts are, as they grow older, lest the water, or other liquid, ooze through.
#ANCIENT WINESKIN SKIN#
But sometimes they are made from the skin of the camel, or the ox, which is then prepared by tanning. Edwin Wilbur Rice says the leather or skin-bottles are of different sizes and kinds, usually made from the skin of the goat, rarely ever from that of the sheep, as it is not considered strong enough. Two such bags made a good load for a camel. Harmer tells of carrying liquids in smoked skin-bottles, which when rent "were mended by putting in a new piece, or by gathering up the piece, or by inserting a flat bit of wood." Burckhardt says he saw Arabs keeping water for their horses on journeys in "large bags made of tanned camel-skin." They would sew the skins up well on four sides, but would leave two openings, one to admit the air, one to let out the water.
Pliny Fisk used fresh goat-skins to carry water, but he says this gave the water a reddish color and an exceedingly loathsome taste.
#ANCIENT WINESKIN CRACK#
The fact that the leather underwent distension once and only once under fermentation, and the further fact that the wine-skins became dried and liable to crack from the smoke and dry heat of the tents and houses, gave point to the parable: "No man putteth new wine into old wine-skins else the wine will burst the skins, and the wine perisheth, and the skins: but they put new wine into fresh wine-skins." All such "bottles" today are liable to crack and become worthless. Those used for wine and oil are tanned by means of oak bark and seasoning in smoke, a process that gives a peculiar astringency of flavor to the wine kept in them, and gave rise to the parable of Jesus about putting new wine into old wine-skins (Mt 9:17 Mr 2:22 Lu 5:37). The skins in common use today, as in ancient times no doubt, for holding water milk, butter and cheese, have the hair left on and are far from cleanly-looking. The primitive bottle among eastern peoples was really a bag made from skins, tanned or untanned, of kid, goat, cow, camel or buffalo-in most cases drawn off of the animal entire, after the legs and head were cut off, and, when filled, grotesquely retaining the shape of the animal. Bot'-'-l (chemeth, no'-dh, nebhel, baqbuq, 'obh askos): The most literal rendering of all the words for bottle in English Versions of the Bible is "skin," or "wine-skin," the Revised Version (British and American).
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