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National Geographic : 1960 Dec
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Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels -Jeremiah 18:3 POTTERY is the calendar of prehistory. So thoroughly have archeologists catalogued its changing styles that the shards culled from ruins may date a city's rise, zenith, and fall within half a century. In Biblical times the potter shaped his vessels with consummate craftsmanship. Common household wares-bowls, plates, jugs, and pitchers - combined utility and beauty. A Judean pottery of about 700 B.C. comes to life in Mr. Soulen's painting. The man at center right prepares raw material by tread ing a mixture of water and clay, a process mentioned in Isaiah 41:25. His elderly colleague completes a bowl on a potter's wheel. This wheel, the oldest yet discovered, consists of two stones, the topmost turning on a tongue protruding from the nether. Since the potter had to shape the vessel with one hand while spinning the top stone with the other, he must have possessed extraor dinary skill. Other machines shown in the painting allow the operator to use both hands. Archeologists have unearthed no such examples from ancient Palestine, but other evidence makes their exis tence seem certain. By presumption, then, the artist depicts the man at the left mass-producing small jugs on a wheel turned by the crouching boy. Another craftsman turns his wheel by foot and burnishes a bowl by holding a spatula against the soft rotat ing clay. When fired in an oven, the lines left by the spatula pro duced a spiral design that enjoyed great popularity in Judah. slabs of tumbled roof. Heavy vessels stored on the roofs had smashed in fall ing, while below them on the fire-black ened floors we found smaller household vessels. This, I concluded, was the dev astation of conquerors who had not only put the city to the torch, but had demolished every building that would not burn. When the last Israelites straggled across the horizon on the dusty road to exile, behind them stretched a lifeless landscape of sacked cities and wasted fields. Thus history came full circle. Israel, born of rebellion, died in rebellion. "There was none left but the tribe of Judah only," mourns the Bible. For more (Continued on page 838) An ancient art revived contributes to Israel's 20th-century balance of trade. Sixteen factories turn out items ranging from specialized laboratory tiles to bathtubs. In 1959 the young nation exported more than $500,000 worth of such products, largely to the burgeoning African market. In 1954 Israel complet ed a plant near Beersheba to utilize gypsum, sand, and clay from the parched Negev for ceramics. This potter shapes a vase in a Haifa factory. rFrru IIAN
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