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Details
LOT 1222
Western Asiatic Limestone Mortar
1ST MILLENNIUM B.C.
5 1/4 in. (4.85 kg, 13 cm).
With short columnar base and bulbous upper body, broad rim with pouring lip. [No Reserve]
Provenance
From a collection acquired on the UK art market from various auction houses and collections mostly before 2000.
From an important Cambridgeshire estate; thence by descent.
Literature
Cf. Squitieri. A., Eitam, D. (ed.), Stone tools in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Ground stone tools, rock-cut installations and stone vessels from Prehistory to Late Antiquity, Oxford, 2019, pp. 237-238, and 275, for examples of similar type.
Footnotes
The later (2nd -3rd century A.D.) Rabbinic tradition emphasised the difference between the permanent mortar (makhtesh kevua) and the movable one (makhtesh metaltelet), with the first being automatically sold with the house, but the second sold only if expressly stated by the vendor. This form of movable mortar was common in the Levant throughout the second half of the 1st millennium B.C.
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