‰È‰˜· Èχ¯˘È‰ ÈÓ„˜‡‰ Êίӯ اﳌﺮﻛﺰ اﻻﻛﺎدﳝﻲ اﻻﺳﺮاﺋﻴﻠﻲ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻘﺎﻫﺮة BULLETIN the israeli academic center in cairo Irit Ziffer THE THRESHING FLOOR IN REALITY AND METAPHOR Dr. Irit Ziffer is curator of the Ceramics and Nehushtan (metals) pavilions at the Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv. She studied archaeology and ancient Near Eastern cultures at Tel Aviv University, where she received her Ph.D. in ancient Near Eastern art. She has curated, among others, the exhibits At That Time the Canaanites Were in the Land (1990); Islamic Metalwork (1996); O My Dove That Art in the Clefts of the Rock: The Dove Allegory in Antiquity (1998); The Corn Spirit (2002); and In the Field of the Philistines: Cult Furnishings from the Favissa of a Yavneh Temple (2007). Food reflects society. Bread, the mechanized technologies, howev- technologies, nothing changed in staple food of all humankind, has er, traditional practices are gradu- the production of our daily bread. become synonymous with the sus- ally being abandoned and becom- tenance of life, as so well reflected ing extinct, to be found only in The Threshing Floor in the Egyptian Arabic word aysh, descriptions in ethno-archaeologi- derived from the root 'yš, ”to live.” cal literature, and the tools they According to biblical descriptions, No wonder, then, that from its used are being sold off as romantic the harvested grain crop was early beginnings bread production relics of a dying tradition. brought to the threshing floor – was likened to human life, and The present discussion focuses gøren in Hebrew – where the grain each stage in grain husbandry be- on a stage in bread production that was separated from the chaff and came synonymous with a human is not often dealt with: threshing winnowed (Numbers 18:30; Ruth stage. Fecundity, procreation, and and the lore that evolved around 3:2). Legumes and small, delicate reproduction of the fields – and of the threshing floor. The interplay garden seeds were threshed there human life – belong to a timeless, of ethnographic descriptions with as well (Isaiah 28:27). boundary-crossing, instinctive tra- written sources and with visual The Hebrew root grn is cognate dition both in popular belief and in material from various periods with Akkadian g/qarãnu – ”to formal ritual. permits the reconstruction of a full stack up, pile on” straw, tribute, Ways of life in the Near East picture of how work was done on etc., or ”to store up grain, oil, have persisted since antiquity the threshing floor, from its earliest wealth, goods”1 – and its deriva- and can be traced in archaeology. beginnings – which can be traced tive magrattu, ”grain storage place, Living analogies help us under- in art to the second half of the threshing floor,” also the name of a stand ancient practices, and no fourth millennium BCE – through month.2 Another cognate is Arabic interpretation of the past can go the present day. In examining the jrn, ”crush, cut, grind,” from which beyond our consciousness learnt significance of the threshing floor derive the threshing surfaces jurn from the present. In other words, within the broad cultural frame- (Egyptian gurn), both the grinding ancient work methods, as depicted work of traditional Middle Eastern stone and the threshing floor. In in art and literature, can be recon- agriculture, biblical and ancient Arabic the threshing floor is also structed on the basis of surviving descriptions and terms may be called baydar, a loan word from traditional methods and customs, cited along with citations from Aramaic idra, as in Daniel 2:35: which, conversely, shed light literature and art from later peri- ”broken in pieces ... like the chaff on ancient visual and written ods, since, basically, until the in- of the summer threshing-floors material. With the adoption of troduction of modern mechanized [’idrey qayi].” ’Idra’ yields bit 2 3 BULLETIN of use granted to local peasants.6 In present-day traditional vil- lage societies with individual- ized cultivation and raising of livestock, each family that grows grain crops has its own threshing floor near the house, or near its plot of land if that is too far from the house, since it is easier to trans- port sacks of grain than bound sheaves of wheat or barley. The threshing floor is not plas- tered or paved with stones; it is a Fig. 1: Village threshing floors, Judea. Photo: David Amit. flat piece of land in a place where the ground dries quickly. Leveled from time to time with a wooden ’idrey – ”house of threshing”– and When fields were owned jointly board,7 it is kept clean and hard by thence bi darey, from which baydar by the inhabitants of a village, long use.8 After the bound sheaves derives in turn. These terms are a level rocky outcrop or a plot of of grain are brought to the thresh- land that could be leveled was set ing floor, their ties are undone, and aside as a threshing floor.4 Each the stalks of grain are spread over family was allotted a space on the circular threshing area. Thresh- the threshing floor, which could ing separates all the elements of the serve a village community for crop: The grains separate from the hundreds of years and was also hulls – the chaff – and the straw is used as a place of social gathering crushed. The crop can be threshed (Fig. 1).5 The public threshing floor by beating with a flail (Judges was also known in ancient times. 6:11; Ruth 2:17; Fig. 2). More usu- A fifteenth-century BCE document ally, however, it is done by draft from Nuzi mentions threshing animals, mainly young heifers that areas (magrattu) that were con- have not yet been trained to the tiguous to one another, with rights yoke (Hosea 10:11) and are guided Fig. 2: Agricultural scene. In the middle register farmers are shown winnowing with a winnowing fork and shovel, as well as by beating. In the lower register a scribe records the amount of grain delivered to the granaries. Egypt, Old Kingdom, 2575–2134 BCE. Collection of the Bible Lands Museum, Jerusalem. also related to Akkadian adru, adratu, “threshing floor,” and also “fields” or “houses” in Neo- Assyrian.3 Two place names on the ancient southern border of the tribe of Judah, Addar (Joshua 15:3), and Hazzar-addar (Numbers 34:4; also mentioned in the Kar- nak lists of Pharaoh Shoshenq I, 945–924 BCE), also seem to be Fig. 3: Nineteenth-century threshing scene. From: C.W. Wilson, Picturesque Palestine, called after the threshing floor. Sinai and Egypt, London 1880, I, p. 201. 4 5 ‰È‰˜· Èχ¯˘È‰ ÈÓ„˜‡‰ Êίӯ اﳌﺮﻛﺰ اﻻﻛﺎدﳝﻲ اﻻﺳﺮاﺋﻴﻠﻲ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻘﺎﻫﺮة BULLETIN the israeli academic center in cairo around the floor with a goad, as away the bloodshed illustrated in Egyptian wall paint- and impurity of this ings from the New Kingdom; or house and carry them by means of a threshing sledge far across the sea.” (Hebrew: môrag) drawn by a team A finer sifting of of oxen, donkeys, horses, or cam- the grain from chaff els (Fig. 3); or sometimes by only and pebbles was one animal.9 done with a sieve or Most likely, the use of animal winnowing-fan power for drawing the threshing (Hebrew: na$pp$h, sledge dates to the second half of kˇeb$r$h). In the Uga- the fourth millennium BCE, when ritic Baal epic, the de- animals were first used to pull struction of the god a plow. In the ancient Near East Mot by the goddess and in the Bible, the crushing of Anat is depicted in the the crop by an animal's hooves or imagery of thresh- Fig. 4: Winnowing in the Hebron region. Photo: Yohanan a drawn implement symbolizes ing: Anat cleaves Ben Ya'akov. Man and His Work Collection, Eretz Israel distress, coming apart, and disin- Mot with a sword – Museum, Tel Aviv. tegration (Isaiah 21:10, 41:15–16; apparently a thresh- Amos 1:3; Micah 4:13; Habakkuk ing sledge13 – roasts his remains for God (Numbers 15:20, 18:27). 3:12). The same simile is found in in the fire, grinds them14 between When the Hebrew slave was set the annals of the kings of Assyria. millstones, and scatters them free in the seventh year, his master Tiglath-pileser III (744–727 BCE) in a field so that the birds will had to give him of his sheep and declared that he had “threshed eat them. In Mot's complaint goats, and of the produce of his [name] as with a threshing tool” to Baal, the afflicted god adds threshing floor and wine-press (k≠ma dayašti adiš).10 winnowing with a riddle or (Deuteronomy 15:14). During the The threshed crop is heaped up sieve to his misfortunes.15 In the Sukkoth (Tabernacles) festival, in one or more piles, and when a Hittite-Hurrian myth ”The Song the crops were brought from the favorable wind blows, it is win- of Ullikummi,” Kumarbi, the grain threshing floor and the wine-press nowed to separate it into its vari- god, tells his son: ”Let him chop (Deuteronomy 16:13), a combina- ous components. The best time for him fine like chaff. Let him grind tion that symbolizes all of human- winnowing is at night when gentle him underfoot (like) an ant. ... ity's food (Numbers 18:27; 2 Kings breezes blow, for strong winds may Let him scatter all the gods down 6:27). blow the seeds into the chaff (Ruth from the sky like flour.”16 Sieves 3:2). Winnowing is performed (or fans) for sifting grains (Arabic: Social and Religious Functions outside the threshing floor.